Jurors Likely to Tack On Additional Fees

If you’ve ever purchased a car or booked a hotel room, then you’re familiar with the unfortunate fact that the initial price can be quite different than the actual price you pay.  Once you factor in taxes, fees and extras, that rock-bottom price you found after so much diligent research suddenly balloons.

The same thing can happen during trial, in that jurors are often tempted to add “extras” to their awards – above and beyond what the plaintiff asked for or what the judge instructed.  During focus groups, jurors often express a desire to award additional money for “lawyer fees” based on the belief the plaintiff attorneys take a big bite out of any award, which could conceivably take away from the money they believe the plaintiffs are entitled to.

To put some hard numbers to our observations, we recently conducted a national survey of more than 800 respondents to explore the kind of “additional fees” jurors would include when awarding damages.

We asked jurors the following questions:

• “If you were on a jury and decided a plaintiff deserved money, would you consider lawyer fees when deciding on the amount?”
• “When deciding how much to award an injured plaintiff, might you want to award more than they asked for to make sure they are taken care of in the future?”
• “Would you want to add interest to an award amount, anticipating that it might take a while for the plaintiff to get paid or for some other reason such as future inflation?”

For all three questions, more than half of the respondents answered “yes.”  Specifically, 66.5 percent said they would consider attorney fees, 61.2 percent would be tempted to award more money to ensure the plaintiff is “taken care of” and 52.6 percent would add interest to their awards. 

The most troubling finding of the survey was that among those who would consider lawyer fees when calculating an award, 47.1 percent admitted they would still consider lawyer fees even if a judge told them not to.  

Jurors’ disturbing willingness to sometimes ignore a judge’s instructions further emphasize the importance of presenting a concise, credible and compelling story to convince jurors to side with your version of events – thereby avoiding the damages phase in the first place.

If you are interested in better understanding your specific jury pool and the strengths and weaknesses of a case, please contact Senior Vice President Claire Luna at cluna@juryimpact.net or 714.754.1010.