Case Name: Marcos A. ZEQUEIRA, M.D., Appellant, v. Lourdes De La ROSA, as Personal Representative of the Estate of Manuel De La Rosa, deceased, Appellee
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1993-11-09
Citations: 627 So. 2d 531
Docket Number: No. 91-2909
Parties: Marcos A. ZEQUEIRA, M.D., Appellant, v. Lourdes De La ROSA, as Personal Representative of the Estate of Manuel De La Rosa, deceased, Appellee.
Judges: Before SCHWARTZ, C.J., and BASKIN and GERSTEN, JJ.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 627
Pages: 531–534

Head Matter:
Marcos A. ZEQUEIRA, M.D., Appellant, v. Lourdes De La ROSA, as Personal Representative of the Estate of Manuel De La Rosa, deceased, Appellee.
No. 91-2909.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District.
Nov. 9, 1993.
Rehearing Denied Jan. 5, 1994.
Stephens, Lynn, Klein & McNieholas, Philip D. Parrish and Marlene S. Reiss, Miami, for appellant.
Floyd Pearson Richman Greer Weil Brum-baugh & Russomanno, Herman J. Russoman-no, and Michele A. Maracini, Miami, for ap-pellee.
Before SCHWARTZ, C.J., and BASKIN and GERSTEN, JJ.

Opinion:
SCHWARTZ, Chief Judge.
The defendant Dr. Zequeira won a jury verdict in his favor in a medical malpractice action. He now appeals from an order granting the plaintiff a new trial on the grounds of juror misconduct during voir dire examination. We reverse.
The order below was based on the fact that juror Edmonson, the foreman, had not responded to inquiries in voir dire about prior "lawsuits," although, as was revealed by the appellee's motion for a new trial, he had been a party in six eases, involving debt collections and the dissolution of his marriage. But none of them had anything to do with the issues in the trial below. Moreover, because the motion was granted without a prior interview, it is not known whether Ed-monson even heard the questions, much less understood them to require (if they really did) answers as to matters which were so foreign to the case being tried. Thus, in sharp contrast to such cases as Perl v. K-Mart Corp., 493 So.2d 542 (Fla. 3d DCA 1986), and Bernal v. Lipp, 580 So.2d 315 (Fla. 3d DCA 1991), the record does not show either that the juror deliberately concealed anything at all during voir dire or, even more obviously, that what he did not say was relevant to his ability to be fair and impartial in this particular case. Hence, neither of the first two requirements — materiality and actual concealment — of the test stated in Schofield v. Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc., 461 So.2d 152 (Fla. 3d DCA 1984), pet. for review denied, 472 So.2d 1182 (Fla.1985), was satisfied.
The motion for new trial — upon which, with its supporting affidavits, the' plaintiff solely relied below — was therefore insufficient as a matter of law and should have been denied outright. As in the strikingly similar case of Skopit v. Neisen, 616 So.2d 505 (Fla. 3d DCA 1993),
[t]he asserted juror misconduct, if true, was not material to this case, and, thus did not warrant a new trial. See Blaylock v. State, 537 So.2d 1103 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988), review denied, 547 So.2d 1209 (Fla.1989).
Skopit, 616 So.2d at 505.
For these reasons the order below is reversed and the cause remanded with directions to enter judgment for the defendant on the jury verdict.
Reversed.
GERSTEN, J., concurs.
. Has anyone on the panel themselves been involved in a lawsuit and let me ask it where you have brought the lawsuit, either you, a very close family member or a very close personal friend, whether it's been for personal injury, a commercial dispute where you have been involved in litigation?
Has anyone on this panel had such an experience before?
Anyone else?
Okay. Has anyone . been a defendant? Now I'm just going to reverse the question. Before the question was whether you have brought the suit as the plaintiff.
Has anyone been a defendant in a case, yourself, a very close family member or a very close friend? No one has been a defendant?
. The cases were referred to as follows in the motion:
1. Household Finance Corporation III v. Louis Edmonson, Case No. 90-16117 CC 05 (copy of the Default Final Judgment dated October 16, 1990 attached hereto as Exhibit A).
2. Eastern Financial Federal Credit Union v. Audrey Edmonson and Louis Edmonson, Case No. 89-49696(08) (copy of Default Final Judgment dated February 2, 1990 attached hereto as Exhibit B).
3. Mayor's Jewelers, Inc. v. Louis Edmonson, Case No. 89-14394-SP-28 (copy of Judgment of Dismissal dated August 20, 1990 attached hereto as Exhibit C).
4. Gars, Dixon & Shapiro, P.A. v. Louis Edmonson and Audrey Edmonson, Case No. 88-5374-SP-25-A (copy of Default Final Judgment dated March 13, 1989 attached hereto as Exhibit D).
5. Audrey Moss Edmonson v. Louis Edmonson, Case No. 86-47647-FC-01 (copy of Judgment of Dismissal dated January 21, 1988 attached hereto as Exhibit E).
6. Ford Motor Credit Co. v. Louis Edmonson, Case No. 79-904122-SP-05 (Due to the age of this case, the records have been destroyed by the Office of the County Clerk).
In addition, Edmonson had apparently been the plaintiff in a 1978 personal injury case.
. During the course of voir dire, counsel for Perl asked all the jurors, including Frank Bower, whether any of them had ever been party to a lawsuit either as a plaintiff or as a defendant. Bower responded that, in his capacity as a partial owner of an automobile company, his company had been sued once for improperly repairing a car. Bower did not recall any other involvement in litigation. After the trial concluded, counsel for Perl discovered that Bower and his automobile company had been involved in litigation at least twenty times and that he personally had been a plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by his condominium association against a developer.
. Bower's denial of personal involvement in any lawsuits and his extremely limited response with respect to lawsuits against his company involving personal injuries amount to a concealment of material facts. Perl v. K-Mart Corp., 493 So.2d at 542 [e.s.].
. Potential juror Alberto Parejo remained silent and did not indicate that he had been a defendant in any lawsuit. In addition, on the juror questionnaire which Parejo completed, he answered in the negative the question whether he or any member of his family ever had a claim for personal injury made against them. See Fla.R.Civ.P. Form 1.984.
Juror Parejo was a member of the jury, which returned a defense verdict. Subsequent to verdict, plaintiffs learned that juror Parejo had previously been a defendant in a personal injury lawsuit. Plaintiffs moved for a new trial on the basis that the jury had been improperly constituted.
A juror interview was ultimately conducted. See Bernal v. Lipp, 562 So.2d 848, 849 (Fla. 3d DCA 1990). At that time it was ascertained that juror Parejo had indeed been a defendant in an automobile accident case approximately one year prior to the trial of the instant case.
‡ ⅜ ⅝ ‡ S}C
For a plaintiff in a personal injury case, the failure of a juror to disclose that he had been a defendant in a personal injury case one year previously would be material. Smiley v. McCallister, 451 So.2d 977, 978-79 (Fla. 4th DCA 1984).
As to the second prong of the test, the information was concealed from counsel, as a result of which counsel lost "the right to make an intelligent judgment as to whether a juror should be challenged...." Minnis v. Jackson, 330 So.2d 847, 848 (Fla. 3d DCA 1976). Since the information was squarely asked for and was not provided, this branch of the test is satisfied. See Skiles v. Ryder Truck Lines, Inc., 267 So.2d 379, 382 (Fla. 2d DCA 1972), cert. denied, 275 So.2d 253 (Fla.1973). Although the juror did not intend to mislead plaintiffs' counsel, the omission nonetheless prevented counsel from making an informed judgment— which would in all likelihood have resulted in a peremptory challenge.
Bernal v. Lipp, 580 So.2d at 316-17 [e.s.].
. In Florida, three requirements must be met in order to require a new trial in this situation:
"(1) a material (2) concealment of some fact by the juror upon his voir dire examination, and (3) the failure to discover this concealment must not be due to the want of diligence of the complaining party...." Skiles v. Ryder Truck Lines, Inc., 267 So.2d 379, 380 (Fla. 2d DCA 1972) (emphasis in original), cert. denied, 275 So.2d 253 (Fla.1973).
Schofield v. Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc., 461 So.2d at 154.
. There is also considerable doubt about the third condition. The information about Mr. Ed-monson was compiled from a computer search of the public records obviously conducted by plaintiff's counsel only after the jury had found against him. This set of circumstances not only invites the question of why the investigation was not "diligently" conducted previously but, more significantly, presents the disquieting practice of exposing jurors, who have done nothing more than honestly perform their civic duty, to the invasion of their private affairs because they have had the temerity to find against a particular litigant.