Era of Perpetual Bachelordom, Day 557- Twelve Angry Men

So, the big event of the week was me winding up on jury duty. I'd seen this coming for a while, but didn't seriously expect to wind up on the jury. And I definitely didn't expect to wind up being foreman of the jury. Apparently I either exude leadership when among strangers, or I was a bit too indifferent when everyone else was saying they didn't want to do it. It was by my estimate one of two or so cases they were trying that week, so my odds of winding up on the jury were actually fairly long. Suffice it to say that I have very strange luck. Contrary to the title, the jurors weren't all that angry, and they weren't all men. It was actually a pretty smart jury, and we needed it. The lawyers on the other hand were very angry (or least they were putting on a good show of it) and the parties to the case were pretty angry too. So it probably all evens out.

The case was a multi-million dollar contract dispute (hence the smart jury I guess) over a bar and adjoining building downtown where a new party purchased the property while the building was being renovated. Part of the contract was that a portion of the sale price would be set aside for the previous owners to complete the construction, legitimate expenses would be reimbursed from that sum of money, and anything that was left over would be retained by the previous owners. As the case was presented (and this is an unbelievable oversimplification), construction had ended and the new owners didn't want to fork over the remainder of the money and the previous owners were suing them for it. Except (we eventually determined) the previous owners hadn't reimbursed some expenses like they should have (10% or so of the amount in dispute) and thus were in breach of their own contract. What we really wanted to do was deduct the 10% from the amount they were asking for and award them that, but the way our jury instructions were written, we couldn't do that- since they breached the contract, they got nothing. This determination followed a 10 minute discussion on the meaning of the word "if," and I'm sure the public is thoroughly confused having not seen the deliberations. So the overall lesson is that whenever a jury comes up with a ruling that doesn't make any sense, blame the wording of the instructions.

The other takeaway came from watching the lawyers. These were big shot lawyers from big firms, and they had 3 to a side. 1 was the head lawyer (probably about 55) who was actually arguing the case, and the other two were his stooges (a few years older than me) who were running the computer and handing him papers. I'm sure they had other jobs too, but that's all I saw. And based on conversations with friends, at a big firm, you have to work for like 8 years after law school and do well in order to be a stooge. Whereas here I am two years in as an engineer and I have a bunch of parts to my name and they send me down to Georgia unattended to monitor production. Sure, the stooges probably get paid twice as much as me, and they get all the girls, but that's okay because I have PARTS!!!

Which reminds me, one other thing to add to my ever-expanding and increasingly bizarre resume, they sent me down to Georgia unattended to monitor production since the last update. That was another interesting experience. Completely different culture in the shop. Stuff doesn't move all that fast. By the end of my week there they were temporarily putting together some of the big pieces and the wing was starting to look like a wing. Except after I got back here they went in and drilled all the holes and messed up on one or two, and then they were stuck for 3 weeks trying to figure out what to do about it. But they're started up again now. We'll get there eventually.