Judges say juries are not `out of control'.

Results of a recent survey of judges show that "9 out of every 10 trial judges ... think the [U.S. jury] system needs only minor tinkering at best." Also, "the judges' responses reflect a high level of ... confidence in [the jury] system." (Allen Pusey, Judges Rule in Favor of Juries, DALLAS MORNING NEWS, May 7, 2000, at A-1.)

Researchers reported that 98 percent of judges who responded to their survey said "juries do at least `moderately well' in reaching a `just and fair' verdict [and] 96 percent said they agreed with jury verdicts most or all of the time." Nearly 60 percent of the respondents said "they would rather have their own civil case heard by a jury than a judge or arbitrator."

These findings were reported in a recent series of eight articles in The Dallas Morning News that covered months of research into the U.S. jury system by the paper's reporters and the Southern Methodist University School of Law. The verdict: Critics' claims that juries are "out of control" are simply not true. (Mark Curriden & Allen Pusey, Tipping the Scales: Juries on Trial, DALLAS MORNING NEWS, May 7-8, 2000.)

Researchers sent a survey covering a variety of jury-related topics to every federal judge in the United States. Of the over 900 judges, 594 (about 65 percent) responded. A separate survey was sent to every state trial judge in Texas.

One article in the series discussed the "bad rap" that juries often receive, noting that many legal scholars, judges, and practicing lawyers say "the free-wheeling, or `out of control,' jury--always a rarity--is a vanishing species.... If anything, juries are more conservative than judges, at least in determining who wins civil damage lawsuits." Nationally, juries decide in favor of the plaintiff just under half the time. By comparison, judges favor plaintiffs in 6 out of 10 nonjury trials. (Mark Curriden, Juries' Bad Rap: Panels Rarely Give Big Awards or Buy Novel Defenses, DALLAS MORNING NEWS, May 8, 2000, at A-1.)

Another article looked at what the researchers reported as some of the most dramatic changes affecting the jury system in recent years. They found that 34 states limit the amount of money that civil juries can award to plaintiffs, 42 states have restricted the types of cases that juries can hear, and federal appeals courts and more than a dozen state high courts have taken whole areas of decision making away from juries. (Mark Curriden, Tipping the Scales: Right to Trial by Jury Fades Under Court Rulings, New Laws, DALLAS MORNING NEWS, May 7, 2000, at A-1.)

Other articles in the series covered issues such as the growing prevalence of mandatory arbitration clauses, "statutes of repose" that prohibit liability lawsuits involving products over a certain age, limits on punitive damages, bans on specific lawsuits imposed by many states, and jury-related statistics from Dallas County, Texas.

The complete series of articles by Curriden and Pusey can be read on the The Dallas Morning News Web site at http://dallasnews.com/juries.