Juries Are About To Get A Lot More Corporate-Friendly Thanks To COVID

Jury pools are likely to get a lot more corporate-friendly in the short-term.

When the courts reopen and begin tackling their backlog of cases, the juries they manage to assemble are going to look a lot different. In a recent survey, nearly half said that they would not comply with a jury summons in the immediate aftermath of COVID. And while that may not be surprising, it turns out that there are some stark philosophical differences between those who would and would not comply.

Every week on our special ATL COVID Cast, we’re chatting with folks coming to the legal profession from different angles to reveal the unexpected ways the pandemic is changing the industry.

This week, we talked to Tom O’Toole, the president of Sound Jury Consulting about a survey the company conducted of 1,000 jury-eligible respondents about the post-lockdown jury pool and the results suggest a palpable impact on civil litigation in the near-term. It turns out that the 45 percent of respondents who said they wouldn’t join a jury in the near-term were significantly more likely to believe that large corporations put profits over safety (86 percent v. 65 percent) and significantly more likely to believe large corporations are more likely to break the law than smaller businesses (78 percent v. 58 percent).

If that holds, this is probably a good time to go to trial if you’re a tort defendant. 


HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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