Opinion ID: 1249586
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: voir dire to determine effect disfavoring tort plaintiffs from institutional advertising campaigns conducted by the insurance industry

Text: A second area, which in reality reaches the same concern, also requires a divergence for me from the majority. The segment is entitled Insurance Crisis. Institutional advertising does not just come out of the woodwork or exist for insurance companies to incur expenses to offset profits. See, for informational purposes, New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc. by Wathen v. Insurance Information Institute by Moore, 140 Misc.2d 920, 531 N.Y.S.2d 1002 (1988), aff'd 161 A.D.2d 204, 554 N.Y.S.2d 590 (1990). Insurance company institutional advertising has at least a dual objective. First, there is a desire to influence legislators. Secondly, and perhaps even more pervasive, is the desire to create an atmosphere of juror predisposition in order to affect the result of jury verdicts. Id. at 1012. I recognize the freedoms guaranteed for press and in advertising by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the preclusive guarantees provided to Wyoming citizens by Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 20. Within that recognition of the rights of the insurance industry to attempt preconditioning through crisis advertising, I am not foreclosed from continued interest in requiring fair and impartial decision makers to serve on juries. The trouble with the discretion application in the majority is to first authenticate the presiding trial judge to be an accomplished mind reader to divine what the jury is thinking and whether they have, individually, achieved preconditioning from the mass media advertising. Without voir dire, the trial judge cannot be factually knowledgeable about the effects of this campaign derived from insurance industry advertising. We, of course, know there is a general effect. The unknown is specificity of what that effect might be on this panel, and more importantly, on the individuals within the panel who will be chosen to render the trial decision. Informed knowledge by the trial judge about the participants in the jury panel is required to provide a basis for any proper exercise of discretion. See Martin v. State, 720 P.2d 894 (Wyo.1986). Properly exercised discretion requires applied reason and attained knowledge of the relevant facts and circumstances. In Martin, we reiterated Washington case law regarding discretion which was first stated in State ex rel. Carroll v. Junker, 79 Wash.2d 12, 482 P.2d 775, 784 (1971): Judicial discretion is a composite of many things, among which are conclusions drawn from objective criteria; it means a sound judgment exercised with regard to what is right under the circumstances and without doing so arbitrarily or capriciously. The Junker court added: Where the decision or order of the trial court is a matter of discretion, it will not be disturbed on review except on a clear showing of abuse of discretion, that is, discretion manifestly unreasonable, or exercised on untenable grounds, or for untenable reasons. Id. In Rex v. Wilkes, 4 Burr. 2539, Lord Mansfield long ago said: `Discretion, when applied to a court of justice, means sound discretion guided by law. It must be governed by rule, not by humor; it must not be arbitrary, vague, and fanciful, but legal and regular.' Tingley v. Dolby, 13 Neb. 371, 14 N.W. 146, 147-48 (1882). Intrinsic to meet the Lord Mansfield rule, essentially restated by the Washington court in Junker and then applied by this court in Martin, is access to the facts from which an informed judgment, constituting exercised discretion, can be made. See In re Schuoler, 106 Wash.2d 500, 723 P.2d 1103, 1110 (1986) (quoting Junker, 482 P.2d at 784), where the court held that discretion is abused when it is `exercised on untenable grounds, or for untenable reasons.' See also In re Marriage of Tang, 57 Wash. App. 648, 789 P.2d 118 (1990). The impartiality of the jurors is a question of fact to be decided by the trial court upon the basis of proper questioning. Jahnke v. State, 682 P.2d 991, 1000 (Wyo.1984). Recognition of the relevant facts to make an informed judgment is required. Matter of Guardianship of F.E.H., 154 Wis.2d 576, 453 N.W.2d 882 (1990). Similarly, the Nebraska court, in following its early opinion in Tingley, added: `[Discretion] means the application of statutes and legal principles to all of the facts of a case.' Goebel v. Holt County, 172 Neb. 81, 108 N.W.2d 406, 410 (1961) (quoting Greenberg v. Fireman's Fund Ins. Co. of San Francisco, 150 Neb. 695, 35 N.W.2d 772, 776 (1949)). Justice Heffernan recognized in McCleary v. State, 49 Wis.2d 263, 182 N.W.2d 512, 519 (1971): In the first place, there must be evidence that discretion was in fact exercised. Discretion is not synonymous with decision-making. Rather, the term contemplates a process of reasoning. This process must depend on facts that are of record or that are reasonably derived by inference from the record and a conclusion based on a logical rationale founded upon proper legal standards. See also D.H. v. State, 76 Wis.2d 286, 251 N.W.2d 196, 208 (1977). With such dependency on the facts for exercised discretion, Rickaby v. Wisconsin Dept. of Health & Social Services, 98 Wis.2d 456, 297 N.W.2d 36 (1980), any real decision made by the trial court in this case only went so far as to leave the facts, which actually existed, undisclosed and unknown. This reaches my continued concern about adjudicating from ignorance, see Engberg v. Meyer, 820 P.2d 70, 142 (Wyo.1991), Urbigkit, C.J., dissenting in part and concurring in part; Story v. State, 755 P.2d 228, 232 (Wyo.1988), cert. denied 498 U.S. 836, 111 S.Ct. 106, 112 L.Ed.2d 76 (1990), Urbigkit, J., specially concurring; Cutbirth v. State, 751 P.2d 1257, 1267 (Wyo.1988), Urbigkit, J., dissenting; and Frias v. State, 722 P.2d 135 (Wyo. 1986), and approaches the result recognized by Chief Circuit Judge Monroe McKay, [which] converts a rule into a license. United States v. Davis, 900 F.2d 1524, 1530 (10th Cir.), cert. denied 498 U.S. 856, 111 S.Ct. 155, 112 L.Ed.2d 121 (1990), McKay, Circuit Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part. Another problem with any bland absolution of denied voir dire involving the effect of a materially and societally divisive subject such as the so-called insurance crisis is that the result is actually determined in application of the imbedded attitude of the trial judge, in application of his individual scope of academic exposure, and his individual attitude about the communicative effect of the institutionally created mass media subliminal advertising. Without voir dire, the trial judge only personifies and individualizes to himself how he thinks other people are informed and effectively become reactive. Furthermore, in result, any knowledgeable exercise of peremptory challenges by litigant's counsel on all sides is unnecessarily constrained when the true bent of mind of the jurors cannot be factually assessed. King v. Westlake, 264 Ark. 555, 572 S.W.2d 841 (1978); Babcock v. Northwest Memorial Hosp., 767 S.W.2d 705 (Tex.1989). See also Borkoski v. Yost, 182 Mont. 28, 594 P.2d 688 (1979). A current case which provides thoughtful discussion in recognition of modern advertising techniques supports my persuasion: [I]nsurance companies should not be able to hide behind the rule prohibiting comments about insurance companies, while at the same time actively and substantially engaging in advertising with the motive of influencing potential jurors in their favor. Kozlowski v. Rush, 121 Idaho 825, 828 P.2d 854, 860 (1992). We should now recognize that realism to follow the logic and cogency of Justice Bistline's writing in that case by analysis that: The insurance companies have injected the issue of the effect of lawsuits on insurance into the public consciousness. Their purpose served by opening the door to the insurance crisis debate, they cannot now expect to slam it shut in the face of plaintiffs who hope to discover the effect of the advertisements on the potential jurors in their case. If the tables were turned in this case, and the plaintiff's bar had launched a media campaign to increase jury awards in Bannock County by showing in graphic detail various personal injuries and the long term effect of same on the victims, we are convinced that the defendants in this case would demand the opportunity to determine whether any of the potential jurors had been biased against defendants in general by the exposure. Id. at 862. This court, like Idaho in Kozlowski, should adopt a rule which balances the inherent possibility of prejudice from evidence of insurance with the recognition that such evidence is relevant to show bias. Id. My disagreement is generally not with the text of the majority. The problem presented is that without facts, the trial judge cannot really exercise discretion if discretion is to be defined as a knowledgeable decision based on facts and information. Martin, 720 P.2d 894. Unless the trial judge has that knowledge, exercised discretion does not exist if he is ignorant of what exposure this particular jury panel has actually received and what persuasion, if any, the national or local institutional advertising campaign has actually achieved. Without voir dire, decision making about jury attitude is essentially either totally conjectural or a judicial reflection of an existent predisposition. The issue is not involvement of insurance companies, it is prejudice and preordination of the jurors, favorable or unfavorable, to the American tort damage and recovery system. The guiding light is the constitutional requirement to provide the fair and impartial jury guaranteed in Wyo. Const. art. 1, § 10.