Court Opinion

ID: 9581009
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:11:00.408785+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:39.272359
License: Public Domain

BAKES, Justice
(concurring specially) :
As the majority points out, it has long been the rule in Idaho that if jurors do not agree to be bound in advance they may average their own personal judgments of how much a party should recover and submit that amount as their verdict. Clark v. Foster, 87 Idaho 134, 391 P.2d 853 (1964); Butland v. City of Caldwell, 51 Idaho 483, 6 P.2d 493 (1931); Cochran v. Gritman, 34 Idaho 654, 203 P. 289 (1921). While we ought not to lightly overturn precedent of such long standing, the soundness of that rule escapes me. Even though a juror might agree in advance to be bound by sudh an averaging process, a juror is truly never bound by the verdict until it has been returned in open court and the jury polled. Only after that time is a juror bound by the results of any such averaging process.
The vice of the averaging procedure is that jurors give up their individual judgments to an arithmetical process. The rule which we have followed for many years in this state attempts to distinguish between legally acceptable averaging and unlawful averaging on the basis of an irrational distinction, i. e., did the jurors agree to be bound in advance. Since jurors are never bound until their verdict is rendered and they are polled, the distinction which has been historically drawn in this state is not really meaningful. It is time that we reexamined the cases relied upon by the majority to see if they really improve the judicial process.