Opinion ID: 2548554
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Appealing to the jury's self-interest

Text: An attorney's appeal in closing argument to the jurors' self-interest is improper and thus is misconduct because such arguments tend to undermine the jury's impartiality. ( People v. Pitts (1990) 223 Cal.App.3d 606, 696, 273 Cal.Rptr. 757 [it is improper to appeal to the self-interest of jurors or to urge them to view the case from a personal point of view].) For example, in Du Jardin v. City of Oxnard (1995) 38 Cal.App.4th 174, 45 Cal.Rptr.2d 48, the city delivered a dumpster to the local school district. The dumpster had a dangerous hole in the floor, which district employees saw but did not fix. The plaintiff, a maintenance worker for the district, sued the city after he was injured when he accidentally stepped into the hole. In closing argument, the city's attorney argued that `[w]hen a public agency, be it a school or a library or a hospital is held liable for the admittedly negligent conduct of other people [presumably referring to the school district's employees], we just have to sit back and start counting the public services that will disappear when we hold a public entity liable for the negligence of other persons.' ( Id. at p. 177, 45 Cal.Rptr.2d 48.) The Court of Appeal held this argument was misconduct: Counsel had appealed directly to the jurors' personal passions and prejudices. This is not a situation where remarks were focused on some corporate entity or on a litigant. Instead, these salvos struck at the heart of the jurors' pocketbooks. ( Id. at p. 179, 45 Cal.Rptr.2d 48.) Similarly, in People ex rel. Dept. of Public Works v. Graziadio (1964) 231 Cal. App.2d 525, 42 Cal.Rptr. 29 ( Graziadio ), a case involving eminent domain, the Court of Appeal found an attorney committed misconduct when he suggested in closing argument that the jury should view the question of just compensation from the personal point of view as a taxpayer. ( Id. at p. 533, 42 Cal.Rptr. 29.) The appellate court held such argument was improper because it appeal[ed] to [the jurors'] self-interest, which violates the fundamental concept of an objective trial by an impartial jury. ( Id. at p. 534, 42 Cal. Rptr. 29.) Contrary to Allstate's contentions, Herzog's argument did not appeal to the jurors' personal self-interest. Unlike in the cases cited above, nothing in the challenged argument suggested the jurors were themselves personally or financially at risk if they returned a verdict in Allstate's favor. The argument implied neither that a verdict for Allstate would somehow invalidate the trial court's direction that jurors could sign in for service on days when no court session was scheduled nor that a judgment for Allstate would render the jurors personally liable for defrauding their employers were they to do as the court had suggested. This case is thus distinguishable from Du Jardin v. City of Oxnard, supra, 38 Cal. App.4th 174, 45 Cal.Rptr.2d 48, where the argument in question suggested a verdict for the city would result in reduced public services for all (including the jurors), and from Graziadio, supra, 231 Cal.App.2d 525, 42 Cal.Rptr. 29, where the argument suggested the jury should not be overly generous in awarding compensation because the money ultimately would come from taxpayers such as themselves. The Court of Appeal below did not directly address the concern of juror self-interest, but instead construed Allstate's contention to be that Herzog's argument was an impermissible variant of the so-called golden rule argument, in which counsel asks jurors to put themselves in the plaintiff's shoes and ask what compensation they would personally expect. (See Beagle v. Vasold (1966) 65 Cal.2d 166, 182, fn. 11, 53 Cal.Rptr. 129, 417 P.2d 673; Loth v. Truck-A-Way Corp. (1998) 60 Cal. App.4th 757, 765, 70 Cal.Rptr.2d 571.) [4] The Court of Appeal found that, by his argument, plaintiff's counsel placed at least some of the jurors in the shoes of the Cassims when he thinly intimated they [the jurors] had committed a fraud by not going to work while collecting pay on days when the court was not in session. Counsel knowingly exploited the fact that many employers would have refused to pay for jury service on those days when the jury was not in session even though the jurors had `been given credit' for appearing. Therefore, when the jurors retired to deliberate, they were conscious of the fact that whatever else the Cassims had done, it was no worse than what the jurors, with the court's approval, had done. The appellate court thus found Herzog had improperly suggested that if the Cassims had intentionally misrepresented their living expenses, the jurors who had signed in for jury service when court was not in session had engaged in similar misrepresentation. The evil of such argument is that it risks converting the jurors from impartial decision makers into personal partisans. As one appellate court explained: The appeal to a juror to exercise his subjective judgment rather than an impartial judgment predicated on the evidence cannot be condoned. It tends to denigrate the jurors' oath to well and truly try the issue and render a true verdict according to the evidence. (Code Civ. Proc., § 604.) Moreover, it in effect asks each juror to become a personal partisan advocate for the injured party, rather than an unbiased and unprejudiced weigher of the evidence. ( Neumann v. Bishop, supra, 59 Cal.App.3d at pp. 484-485, 130 Cal.Rptr. 786.) Although Herzog's argument, perhaps ill advisedly, asked the jurors to consider their personal experience in the courtroom in reaching their verdict, the argument could not have converted them into partisan advocate[s] for the Cassims. The clear point of the argument was that people do not commit the type of intentional misrepresentation that would void an insurance policy if they misrepresent something at the direction of someone in authority (presumably, in this case, invoking plaintiffs' reliance on Thompson's advice that they reconstruct living expense receipts as best they could). Herzog never urged the jurors to put themselves in the Cassims' position or to view the case from the Cassims' personal perspective. We thus find the disputed argument was not improper for either appealing to the jurors' self-interest or urging them to decide the case subjectively rather than objectively.