Court Opinion

ID: 9453262
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:08:24.466822+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:35.366051
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring):
I concur in the result. But because of the mystique of “injecting insurance into the case” 1 I must state my under*590standing of what this case decides, and what it does not decide, on the issue of questioning of the jury panel by the trial judge.
The majority say: “No issue is presented as to the discretion of the court in excusing jurors, and this decision in no way involves such a question. No point is made here of the court’s apparent practice of excusing all casualty insurance industry employees in tort cases. The sole issue presented is whether appellant was prejudiced in the court’s voir dire examination by the injection into the case of the possibility that appellant had insurance coverage.” Thus the discretion of the trial judge to exclude jurors is recognized, but his exercise of discretion in this instance is found to require reversal. The error in the trial court was not the securing of information about employment of jurors in the insurance industry, nor the action the judge took once he had the information, but was in the manner by which the information was obtained. There was no undue publication to the jury of an irrelevant matter. But there was unnecessary publication of a relevant matter.
The power of the trial court is clear. Section 1863 of Tit. 28, U.S.C.A., provides :
(a) A district judge for good cause may excuse or exclude from jury service any person called as a juror. (b) Any class or group of persons may, for the public interest, be excluded from the jury panel or excused from service as jurors by order of the district judge based on a finding that such jury service would entail undue hardship, extreme inconvenience or serious obstruction or delay in the fair and impartial administration of justice.
Sub-section (a) is declaratory of an inherent power of all judges. Sub-section (b) is broader than the common law power.
Qualifications of jurors who meet the statutory standards2 are in the discretion of the trial court, a discretion that is wide and large.3
The judge’s exercise of discretion is reviewable only for abuse.4 Mr. Justice Holmes states the scope of review to be that conclusions of the trial court on partiality or impartiality of a juror can be set aside only for manifest error. Holt v. United States, 218 U.S. 245, 31 S.Ct. 2, 54 L.Ed. 1021 (1910).
The court has an interest in having a jury free of persons whose employment —in the eyes of the judge, from the dispassionate height of the bench — is so closely allied to the subject matter of the suit that they cannot be fair and impartial.5 If he has the view that bankers *591cannot impartially serve in suits on promissory notes, in such a case he may exclude jurors employed by banks. In a medical malpractice case he may exercise his discretion to see that no juror is employed by a doctor or a hospital. In some communities law firms handling cases for tort claimants employ persons not lawyers as accident investigators; undoubtedly in an accident case the judge may exclude any juror so employed. In a suit against a lawyer by his client for negligent representation or breach of contract the court may in its discretion remove any juror who works for a law firm. The possibilities are multitudinous. That the judge’s exercise of discretion takes him in a direction which plaintiff or defendant silently cheers does not mean discretion is lost.6
The fact of sensitive employment is as relevant and as significant when the employment is in the insurance industry as when in other industries. Actually the fact of employment, in the eyes of the judge, (as it was with this particular trial judge), may be more important in the case of the casualty company employee, whose employer is engaged in the business of handling, and frequently contesting and litigating, the exact kind of claim involved in suit. Whether in a particular area or community, in a particular type of case or eases, a federal trial judge is to exercise his power to ex-elude jurors that he deems to be m sensitive employment is for him to decide, subject to review for abuse of discretion only.
“Injection of insurance” usually takes the form of an inquiry ostensibly for the purpose of securing information that would disqualify a juror as a matter of law (as by ownership of stock in a specifically named corporate insurer), or information useful in striking, when in fact the inquiry is not justified because no insurance company has any interest in the case. Inquiries conducted for this purpose may be by court or counsel or both.7 In this case there was no inquiry for such purpose. From start to finish it is plain that the judge interrogated— and he did so on his own volition* and not at the request of a party- — to determine if there was good cause for him to exclude jurors from service in this case.8
Cases such as Martin v. Burgess, 82 F.2d 321 (5th Cir. 1936), and Louisville & Nashville R.R. v. Williams, 370 F.2d 839 (5th Cir. 1966), have no application to the power vested in the court itself to exclude jurors, except to the extent that they are useful analogies in weighing whether the court has abused its discretion.
If the trial court determines the facts about employment from occupational data otherwise available, or by simply asking each juror on the panel to state *592and describe his employment, and then acts without undue publication of its reasons, its discretionary exclusion in a tort case of jurors employed in the casualty insurance business would not be an abuse of discretion. I understand the majority do not hold otherwise, therefore I concur in the result.

. This is a convenient and ear-catching phrase, but no more than that. As with many other shorthand statements in the law, it is easy for it to become a sub*590stitute for analysis of actual events and to be memorialized as a sort of immutable principle with foreordained consequences.

. 28 U.S.C.A. § 1861.

. E. g., Louisville & Nashville R.R. v. Williams, 370 F.2d 839 (5th Cir. 1966); Spells v. United States, 263 F.2d 609 (5th Cir.), cert, denied, 360 U.S. 920, 79 S.Ct. 1439, 3 L.Ed.2d 1535 (1959) ; United States v. Sferas, 210 F.2d 69 (7th Cir.), cert, denied, sub. nom. Skally v. United States, 347 U.S. 935, 74 S.Ct. 630, 98 L.Ed. 1086 (1954); Beck v. United States, 298 F.2d 622 (9th Cir.), cert, denied, 370 U.S. 919, 82 S.Ct. 1558, 8 L.Ed.2d 499 (1962); Cox v. General Elec. Co., 302 F.2d 389 (6th Cir. 1962); Bratcher v. United States, 149 F.2d 742 (4th Cir.), cert, denied, 325 U.S. 885, 65 S.Ct. 1580, 89 L.Ed. 2000 (1945).
Smith v. United States, 112 F.2d 217 (D.C.Cir.), cert, denied, 311 U.S. 663, 61 S.Ct. 20, 85 L.Ed. 425 (1940), held it a matter of the judge’s discretion, to excuse prospective jurors who had played the numbers game within two years, in a prosecution for violating the lottery law, saying that “it makes no difference whether the release was for cause or favor.” See 28 U.S.O.A. § 1870 providing in part that “[a] 11 challenges for cause or favor * * * shall be determined by the court.”

. Spells v. United States, supra; Bratcher v. United States, supra; United States v. Sferas, supra; Cox v. General Electric Co., supra.

. The importance of employment as a source of possible bias was described by Mr. Justice Jackson in Frazier v. United States, 335 U.S. 497, 69 S.Ct. 201, 93 *591L.Ed. 187 (1948), speaking of government employees: “So I reject as spurious any view that government employment differs from all other employment in creating no psychological pressure of dependency or interest in gaining favor, which might tend to predetermine issues in the interest of the party which has complete mastery over the juror’s ambition and position.”

. The court determined in its lengthy and careful voir dire that a juror at one time had discussed with one of plaintiff’s attorneys a personal injury claim. No suit was brought, in fact he never heard anything further from the attorney about it. This was not disqualification as a matter of law and could have been treated as informational only. But the judge, under his power to seek fairness and impartiality, excused the juror.

. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 47(a).

. Before revelation, or even discussion, of whether there was or was not “insurance in the case” the judge already had determined that two persons employed in the insurance industry could not, in his opinion, be “fair and impartial” and had excused them. In the conference at the bench after counsel informed the court there was no “insurance in the case,” the judge explained what he had done, saying “nobody that has been in the business of writing insurance for sixteen years or anyone that is connected with the insurance casualty business can be a fair and impartial juror in any kind of tort case.” This statement of the court’s view was not directed at the panel but made in the bench conference in what the record describes as “low tones.”