A study of juror and jury judgments in civil cases: Deciding liability for punitive damages
A study was conducted to investigate civil juries' decisions concerning defendants' liability for punitive damages in tort cases. A total of 121 six- member mock juries composed of jury-service-eligible citizens were presented summaries of previously decided cases and given a comprehensive instruction on the defendant's liability for punitive damages. Most of the mock juries decided that the consideration of punitive damages was warranted, although appellate and trial judges had concluded that they were not warranted. The tendency to find the defendant liable was partly due to jurors' failure systematically to consider the full set of legally necessary conditions for the verdicts they rendered. Individual differences in the jurors' backgrounds were not strongly related to their verdicts; income and ethnicity were weakly related to judgments. The social processes in deliberation on civil juries were similar to the dynamics of deliberation that have been observed in criminal juries.
Duke Scholars
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Related Subject Headings
- Criminology
- 5201 Applied and developmental psychology
- 4804 Law in context
- 4402 Criminology
- 1801 Law
- 1702 Cognitive Sciences
- 1701 Psychology
Citation
Published In
DOI
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Criminology
- 5201 Applied and developmental psychology
- 4804 Law in context
- 4402 Criminology
- 1801 Law
- 1702 Cognitive Sciences
- 1701 Psychology