You have suffered a significant fracture of the femur in an accident, which is the biggest bone in the body, and you have filed a personal injury case to claim compensation. Your case has come all the way to trial, and now during jury selection, one of the jurors tells your lawyer that he has suffered the same type of fracture, but his injuries were not permanent.
You have suffered a significant fracture of the femur in an accident, which is the biggest bone in the body, and you have filed a personal injury case to claim compensation. Your case has come all the way to trial, and now during jury selection, one of the jurors tells your lawyer that he has suffered the same type of fracture, but his injuries were not permanent.
Does this automatically disqualify him from serving as a juror in your case?
Jury Selection and Questioning Potential Jurors
In the accident, you have suffered a major femur fracture, and now you have significant disability, and possibly permanent injury. During jury selection, your lawyer is trying to find six jurors, six members of the community, who can judge the evidence in your case to determine whether you are more likely right than wrong and what you are claiming is true. Now if a potential juror tells your lawyer that he has suffered the same type of injury in the past, would that be an automatic disqualification?
How would your attorney deal with that revelation?
The answer is no, it is not automatic. Your lawyer will have to probe and ask this potential juror additional questions, such as:
· How did this accident happen?
· How did you suffer your injury?
· What problems did you have after receiving the treatment?
Your Lawyer can still have Concerns
Now, your lawyer finds out that this potential juror is not suffering from any long-term injury. However, you have suffered for a while and your suffering does not appear to be abating any time soon. On top of this, you have a number of problems that the doctors and other witnesses are going to come in and testify at the trial about the things you can no longer do. The mere fact that this potential juror’s injuries were not as significant as your injuries, does it mean this person is not qualified to sit as a juror at your trial?
The answer is no, such a person could be qualified to sit as a juror. Since this juror did not suffer long-term injury then would that stop him from understanding the type of pain you have gone through? The answer is no, the juror is likely to understand the pain you are going through. However, your lawyer might have a concern that this juror might think that this type of injury, clearly cannot be permanent or as bad as you are claiming it to be.
Concerns of the Defense Attorney
On the other hand, the defense attorney is also going to have a concern about this potential juror, since he is going to share some type of connection with you because you both had similar injuries. The defense attorney will think that this juror is going to favor you simply because you both had similar injuries, even though the final extent of the injuries are not the same.
So to answer the original question, a potential juror will not be automatically disqualified just because he has suffered the same injury in the past. However, both lawyers will have concerns that will most likely push them towards dismissing this person.
