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The last time I’d been summoned to jury duty, in Tampa, I’d waited until almost 3:00 with nothing but a copy of On the Road to entertain myself with. This time, I brought my laptop and briefcase. Naturally, I was called for the first voir dire of the day.

They herded about 30 of us into the courtroom. We were told that this case was a medical malpractice suit that would last until about Thursday, and possibly into Friday. The judge asked some general questions and then turned over questioning to plaintiff’s counsel. His partner performed the bulk of the proceedings.

I was baffled at some of the questions he asked. They seemed inane–to a mechanic, “What kind of cars do you prefer to work on?” and to a pediatric nurse, “Do you like children?” On my questionnaire, I had listed playing guitar as one of my hobbies. He asked if I were a professional guitarist. Uh… no, that’s why it’s under “hobbies.”

Later, he asked several general questions.

• Do any of you have a bias against doctors? Several people.
• Do any of you have a bias against lawyers? An overlapping set of roughly the same number of people.
• Have any of you ever been party to a lawsuit? Many hands.
• Have any of you ever been party to a medical malpractice lawsuit? Most of those who raised their hands to the previous question.
• Have any of you had a family member sue for malpractice? Half a dozen hands.
• Have any of you had a family member experience malpractice but not sue? My hand went up.

I had to explain about a mistake that was made during a surgery for my mother, and why I thought she hadn’t sued. I mentioned a few reasons, and said something to the effect that “It wasn’t a mistake worth someone losing their license over.”

He followed up with, “Does anyone here think that this case involves the loss of a medical license?”

Defense counsel leaped to his feet with an objection. I thought, Well, I’m out of here.

Voir dire lasted until almost 3:00, and then they sent us out while they decided who they wanted. There were about ten people who I suspected were automatic rejects, mostly for hardship. Another three or four were nurses; the plaintiff was herself a nurse, so I figured they’d go. One guy was so stupid it was amazing he could find both pant legs when he got dressed in the morning.

Could have gone either way with him.

Around 3:30, they called us back in, explained (again) how important jury duty was, thanked us (again) for sitting through voir dire, and started calling jurors.

“Juror number two, Mr. Falco.” I looked around. There’s another Mr. Falco here? The number on my juror summons was 1146. But the number referred to where we were seated. They picked six more jurors, told us that it was too late in the day to start the trial, charged us not to talk about any aspect of the case, and sent us home.

I’ll talk about the trial in my next post.