When I hear the insurance companies, the “Chambers” of commerce, and other pro-business and anti-consumer organizations discuss what is always called “tort reform” but which is another name for how they can make money at the expense of those who are least able to fight them back and resist the encroachment on their rights, to include their right to a jury trial, I can only cringe. Cringe.

Why?  A jury trial, the right to have your case heard by other citizens in your community is an inalienable right as a citizen of the United States.  A right that stands on the blood of our fathers, and their fathers.   A right that citizen-soldiers have died for fighting on foreign soil over the years.  A right that is uniquely and truly American.  Here is a post I had on my blog, the Kentucky Law Review, entitled “Of Juries, “Conscience of the Community”, and justice“.

I was a solder, a Judge Advocate, and military judge before I came to Kentucky.  Our Constitution is dear to me and to every person who has worn a uniform.   I have enjoyed my talks with Darryl’s dad, Sheldon Isaacs, as he recounted his days as a soldier in an Army “Mash” unit (mobile Army surgical hospital) during his time serving in the Korean war.  I can see in his eyes the importance of duty, honor, and country.  The same look I remember my dad had when he told me of his time as a tanker in World War II serving under General Patton in World War II.  Our Constitution is important, our rights under it are important, and I believe anyone who wants to limit your right to a jury trial by reducing the number of citizens who can sit on that jury, the number required for a verdict, the cap on the number that a jury may award as damages for injuries to compensate those who have been hurt, or any one of a number of ways to take your rights away to allow a corporation to profit, is wrong, wrong, and more wrong.

Recently proposed legislation in the Kentucky legislature to take away that right to a jury trial when your family has been hurt from the negligence  of a nursing home is wrong, too.  Scary, scary wrong.

I repeat the following post as a reminder that our own Supreme Court of Kentucky once rec0gnized that a jury trial is not only a right of Constitutional proportions but represents the “conscience of the community”.  A legal right with a moral compass.  Something that many countries in the world cannot only imagine but never even dream of achieving.  But it is a right guaranteed by our United States Constitution.

Kentucky injury lawyers such as those at our firm represent those who have been hurt by the negligence of others.   We represent them so that justice is served.  We are called by those who have been hurt through the negligence of others for the sole reason that “When You Hurt, We Help.”  Plain and simple.

Here is my post.

The jury is a powerful force in American and English jurisprudence.

The right to a jury of your peers is a Constitutional right that men and women have died to protect for centuries.  One that some may not fully appreciate.

While reviewing audio tapes and literature of Moe Levine, a phenomenal personal injury and medical malpractice and negligence lawyer, who passed away nearly 50 years ago, I came upon some nuggets of wisdom.

One of these is on the value and function of a jury.  He stated that jurors are not judges without robes but rather they as cumulative body reflect and speak in this case as the “conscience of the community”.  I liked that, but I wondered if that was the law in Kentucky.

And yes it is.  Powerful language, and the recognition of a role that goes back hundreds of years.

As a Louisville Kentucky personal injury lawyer, retired soldier and military judge, I have a strong and pervasive belief and trust in juries.  Twelve ordinary people assembled to render justice usually get it “right” and move beyond their individual prejudices and biases.  The sum of the parts is always greater than the individuals.

The judicial decision regarding when to save the interpretative function for the court and when to delegate the interpretative function to the jury is crucial to the development of negligence law. The more judges take cases away from juries, the more the concepts of reasonable conduct, negligence and gross negligence become synonymous with the view of the judge or judges on that court. Likewise, the more the interpretative power is delegated to juries, the more these concepts become the aggregate of discrete findings by juries. See L. Green, Judge and Jury (1930). By delegating interpretation to a jury the judiciary allows current considerations of equity and common sense to modify what might otherwise become anachronistic principles. L. Green, supra, at 385-91. The role of the jury in interpreting the evidence and finding the ultimate facts [**5] is an American tradition so fundamental as to merit constitutional recognition. U.S. Const. Amend. VII; Ky. Const. Sec. 7. The conscience of the community speaks through the verdict of the jury, not the judge’s view of the evidence. It may well be that deciding when to take a case away from the jury is a matter of degree, a line drawn in sand, but this is all the more reason why the judiciary should be careful not to overstep the line.

Horton v. Union Light, Heat & Power Co., No. 84-SC-80-DG, Supreme Court of Kentucky, 690 S.W.2d 382; 1985 Ky. LEXIS 220, April 11, 1985 ,  Rehearing Denied June 14, 1985