Juror Judgments in Civil Cases: Hindsight Effects on Judgments of Liability for Punitive Damages

An experiment was conducted to investigate whether hindsight bias influences an important class of legal decisions—civil jurors' judgments of liability for punitive damages. Jury-eligible citizens were shown a videotaped summary of the circumstances surrounding an environmental damage lawsuit. Some subjects were presented a foresight perspective and asked to judge whether or not a railroad should comply with an order to stop operations on a section of track that had been declared hazardous. Other subjects were asked to judge whether the railroad was liable for punitive damages after an accident occurred. Three independent variables were manipulated: temporal perspective with one third of the subjects assessing risks in foresight and two thirds assessing risks in hindsight; subject role with one half of the subjects asked to assume the role of a juror rendering a verdict and one half the role of a citizen whose personal opinion was solicited; and, in the hindsight conditions only, the amount of damage ($240,000 vs. $24,000,000) caused by the accident. Almost all measures of participants' judgments and thoughts about the case showed dramatic foresight–hindsight differences. The participants' role had an effect on some measures; for example, participants in the juror role exhibited slightly smaller hindsight effects when judging liability than did those in the citizen role. The magnitude of the damage caused by the accident had no effects on any measures.     

Juror Judgments in Civil Cases: Effects of Plaintiff's Requests and Plaintiff's Identity on Punitive Damage Awards

Two experiments were conducted to study the manner in which civil jurors assess punitive damage awards. Jury-eligible citizens were shown a videotaped summary of an environmental damage lawsuit and told that the defendant had already paid compensatory damages. They were asked to judge liability for punitive damages and, if damages were to be assessed, to assign a dollar award. Three independent variables were manipulated in the case materials: the dollar amounts that were explicitly requested by the plaintiffs in their closing arguments to the jury, the geographical location of the defendant corporation, and the location of the lead plaintiff. Consistent with prior findings of anchor effects on judgments, we found that the plaintiffs requested award values had a dramatic effect on awards: the higher the request, the higher the awards. We also found that local plaintiffs were awarded more than were geographically remote plaintiffs, while the location of the defendant company did not have reliable effects on the awards. The implications of these results for procedures in civil trials and for theories of juror decision making are discussed.     

Reply to Vidmar

Law and Human Behavior -     

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.