(Governor Tom's Note: I was summoned to jury duty from January 17-24, 2007 at the Superior Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. As anyone who's had jury duty knows, there's always tons of downtime. You've got a break in the morning, a 90-minute lunch, and then another break in the afternoon. In my case, I had all that plus tons more time to kill before we got started in the morning. That's because, living in the Valley as I do, it's much more practical to take the subway from North Hollywood. The only catch there, right? All of the parking spaces at NoHo are usually filled up by 7 a.m., which says a lot considering there are literally about a thousand spaces there. So I'd get to the courthouse, like, two hours early. Anyway, bottom line is I had tons of time to read. As it happens, I was reading The Catcher in the Rye for the second time. Much more than the first time I read it in the spring of '01, I couldn't get enough of the narrator Holden Caufield's voice. I just love the way he talks about stuff. So when my jury duty was over, I decided it'd be nice to describe my experiences...in the voice of Holden Caufield.)
Goddam jury duty.
I was assigned to the downtown courthouse, the one on Grand Ave. right across from the opera house. There’d be moments where I’d look over at the opera house, just staring at it like a madman: “Oh why can’t I be over there instead of in this lousy fluorescent-riddled building? I’m so close yet worlds away.” Etc., etc.
In a nutshell, the defendant was this serious as hell guy named Hayward, who owned a Web site called bislawcenter.com. It was basically a site that acted as a debt collecting agency on behalf of banks and creditors trying to collect money from businesses who weren’t paying up. So if you were Bank of America or what have you, and some lousy company wasn’t keeping up with their payments, you would hire out bislawcenter.com to collect the lousy debt on your behalf.
The plaintiff was this one guy named Larry. He killed me. Ol' Larry had invested a cool $150K in four debt portfolios from bislawcenter.com. Each portfolio contained a bunch of businesses who owed money. The idea was that this guy would make his lousy goddam investment back over time, plus interest. The plaintiff had originally heard about this investment opportunity from his roommate Jason, a recovering alcoholic who was unable to pay rent.
In fact, Hayward, Larry, and Jason all knew each other from Alcoholics Anonymous. That killed me, it really did.
Anyway, Larry’s gripe in this trial was that Hayward had not been very forthright in the nature of his debt collecting agency. Larry had made back about $30K. He claimed Hayward stopped trying to collect on these portfolios after a while. So Larry was suing not only for the $120K balance, but also interest and punitive damages.
I'm sure you can see what the deal was by now, but I'll point it out to you anyway. There was no good guy here. Both Larry and Hayward were a couple of dumb as hell guys who hadn’t conducted their affairs very responsibly. Neither of them were exactly evil or anything. I don't mean that. They were just not very bright at all. After listening to testimony for four or so lousy days, we finally began the deliberating on the afternoon of the fifth day. The verdict form contained 12 questions. We answered 11 of them by the time we went home Tuesday and, here's what killed me, we had to return Wednesday morning to figure out the 12th question: How much money to give Larry. In the end we decided to teach both of these characters a lesson. While we did give Larry the balance of his investment, we did not give him any interest or punitive damages. And Larry’s lawyer wanted us to rule that Hayward had acted with malice. I shouldn't have to tell you we said no on that. So while we made Hayward pay the $120K, we could have been harsh as hell on him. Between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, it took us about three and a half hours to deliberate the lousy verdict.
The judge was a swell gal named Joanne O’Donnell, or Josie for short. She was a very even-tempered woman who kept things moving along. Not like my last judge. The last time I was on jury duty (January-February 2004), I was stuck on this case that lasted about five hundred thousand years. Coincidentally, it was on the 4th floor of the downtown courthouse, just down the hall from the courtroom I was in this time. And the judge for that case was this white-haired codger who was always making you feel lousy whenever he talked. I mean even if he was trying to be funny, he just wasn’t. He couldn’t help making the entire courtroom feel depressed. That’s the thing about judges, I’ve learned, is that either they’re born with a sense of humor or they’re not. If they’re not, no matter how hard they try to be funny, they will do nothing but make you feel lousy and depressed.
And now here are some classic moments from the week of jury duty. I swear like hell that all of these moments really happened.
-One classic moment came fairly early in the trial. The plaintiff’s lawyer, Mr. Lippo, was in the middle of questioning his own client. He kept looking at the clock while doing so. It was around 11:35 a.m. when he finally said: “I’m sorry, Your Honor, I thought I could make it to the noon lunch break, but I can’t. Could we take a five-minute bathroom break? Starbucks is causing me problems.” And then Judge Josie said: “Well, I’ll tell you what. We’ll take an early recess at 11:45, so if you could struggle for the next 10 minutes…” And then Mr. Lippo said: “Thanks, Your Honor. I think I can make it.” And then for the next 10 minutes Mr. Lippo continued asking his client questions from behind the podium, fidgeting like a madman. Good ol' Josie. You gotta hand it to her. Accommodating as hell.
-During a short afternoon break one time, I was in the bathroom. And then this guy comes in all dressed in a suit and everything, and he just starts talking to me about the divorce he’s going through. He said something like: “Whatever you do, don’t get married! There’s two kinds of people in the world: the smart man and the wise man. The smart man only learns by making mistakes. The wise man knows ahead of time not to make them. So I’ll be the smart man, the man who learned the hard way never to get married. And you’ll be the wise man. I’m telling you never to get married, so you’ll know ahead of time not to make that mistake.”
-And then this other time, I was heading outside for my lunch break. For my lunch break I would always go outside to that great huge courtyard next to the courthouse with the huge fountain and fifty thousand or so concrete benches. So I was heading out this one time for lunch. So what I did was, I went out through the sliding glass doors and no sooner did I start going down the steps than I saw a well dressed middle-aged woman standing at the curb shouting at someone across the street. She was addressing someone named Trey. So I kept looking across the street, trying like a madman to follow her line of sight, but for the life of me I could not see anyone. There were cars going by, but she wasn’t glaring at any one car or anything. She was just glaring at a very particular spot and saying things like: “HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO RAISE A CHILD IN THE MILLENIUM?!” No, really, she said exactly that. “YOU’RE A SENIOR CITIZEN, TREY!” the middle-aged woman said. And then she’d take a few steps back toward the courthouse entrance, spot her reflection in the sliding glass doors, and start yelling again. At herself. Anyway, perhaps that’s not a classic moment, but more of a sad moment. You take people who yell a lot, at themselves, or at invisible people across the street for instance. If you think about it, chances are good it won’t be a classic moment but more of a moment that makes you feel lousy and depressed.
-And then there was this one time during a break that I was walking around the hallways of the courthouse like a madman looking for a mail drop for my Netflix DVDs. So what I finally did was, I went to the Information window, but there was a lousy line. Luckily, though, there was a touchscreen kiosk right next to the Information window that helps you find things inside the courthouse, like mailboxes for instance. Unfortunately, however, I couldn’t locate the mailboxes using the touchscreen kiosk. But while I was slowly figuring that out, a guy just walked up to the Information window and was like: “Can you tell me the closest place I can go to get married? I’m talking about the closest goddam spot from this point where I can get married.” And then the woman behind the window mumbled something I couldn’t hear, and the guy was like, “Really? I have to go that far to get married?” I didn’t hear what happened after that, as I’d given up on the kiosk and asked a janitor where to find the mailbox. As it turned out, there was a mail slot on each and every floor that is part of one long chute leading to the first floor mailbox. Unfortunately, however, the slots were too small for my Netflix DVDs, so I had to walk down to the first floor where the chute ended at this huge metal box mounted on the wall right by the security checkpoint. That huge box was the only place in that entire goddam courthouse that was big enough for my Netflix DVDs.
-And here’s one classic moment spread out over every single day I was there. It really kills me how, when you’re confronted with something that interrupts your life and routines, such as jury duty, you establish a routine to get through it. This applies especially to creatures of habit like myself. And this further applies to my morning routine during jury duty. The courthouse generously paid for the subway fare (I took the Red Line from NoHo to the Civic Center), but the catch was this. The NoHo parking lot, which has about seventy or so million parking spaces, was completely filled up by seven a.m. So I had to get there before seven, which meant I was at the courthouse by seven-thirty-ish, which meant I had a good solid two and a half lousy goddam hours to kill before the courtroom opened. So what I did was, I went up to the top floor of the courthouse (ninth floor), which has a cafeteria called Top of the Court. So I’d go there and read and eat breakfast and sip coffee and sit at a table by the glass doors that open up to a wide walkway that surrounds the cafeteria on all four sides and affords nice views of downtown. Now here's what really killed me about that. I’d be dressed all casually in jeans while all around me at most of the tables were these serious as hell lawyers getting an early start to their day, decked out all professional in their suits and whatnot. I mean there they all are, scribbling away like madmen on their yellow legal pads. And some of them would be meeting with clients, who’d also be very nicely dressed and looking serious as hell. But not me. There I was in my old, torn, shabby-looking jacket, my jeans, and my awful goddam juror badge dangling from my jacket collar. Simply gorgeous. And the funny thing was, if a lawyer was meeting with a client at a table not too far from me, they didn’t seem to care that I could hear each and every syllable coming out of their lousy mouths about the lousy cases they were working on. And these cases did sound lousy, mostly of a financial nature. It didn’t seem to matter if someone was being sued, getting divorced, it didn’t matter. The conversations always devolved into a lousy goddam financial nature.
I'll bet you can't guess what play opened at the Ahmanson Theatre right across the street from the courthouse, just a few months later. 12 Angry Men. If that doesn't kill you, nothing will. And what's more, it had that big fat funny as hell guy who played Norm in Cheers. I shouldn't have to tell you that I saw it, but I will, and I did. The realism was simply amazing. I mean that’s what it’s like, a buncha people talking over each other. Loudly. And soon after that, I got the movie version with Henry goddam Fonda. From goddam Netflix.
Goddam jury duty.
I was assigned to the downtown courthouse, the one on Grand Ave. right across from the opera house. There’d be moments where I’d look over at the opera house, just staring at it like a madman: “Oh why can’t I be over there instead of in this lousy fluorescent-riddled building? I’m so close yet worlds away.” Etc., etc.
In a nutshell, the defendant was this serious as hell guy named Hayward, who owned a Web site called bislawcenter.com. It was basically a site that acted as a debt collecting agency on behalf of banks and creditors trying to collect money from businesses who weren’t paying up. So if you were Bank of America or what have you, and some lousy company wasn’t keeping up with their payments, you would hire out bislawcenter.com to collect the lousy debt on your behalf.
The plaintiff was this one guy named Larry. He killed me. Ol' Larry had invested a cool $150K in four debt portfolios from bislawcenter.com. Each portfolio contained a bunch of businesses who owed money. The idea was that this guy would make his lousy goddam investment back over time, plus interest. The plaintiff had originally heard about this investment opportunity from his roommate Jason, a recovering alcoholic who was unable to pay rent.
In fact, Hayward, Larry, and Jason all knew each other from Alcoholics Anonymous. That killed me, it really did.
Anyway, Larry’s gripe in this trial was that Hayward had not been very forthright in the nature of his debt collecting agency. Larry had made back about $30K. He claimed Hayward stopped trying to collect on these portfolios after a while. So Larry was suing not only for the $120K balance, but also interest and punitive damages.
I'm sure you can see what the deal was by now, but I'll point it out to you anyway. There was no good guy here. Both Larry and Hayward were a couple of dumb as hell guys who hadn’t conducted their affairs very responsibly. Neither of them were exactly evil or anything. I don't mean that. They were just not very bright at all. After listening to testimony for four or so lousy days, we finally began the deliberating on the afternoon of the fifth day. The verdict form contained 12 questions. We answered 11 of them by the time we went home Tuesday and, here's what killed me, we had to return Wednesday morning to figure out the 12th question: How much money to give Larry. In the end we decided to teach both of these characters a lesson. While we did give Larry the balance of his investment, we did not give him any interest or punitive damages. And Larry’s lawyer wanted us to rule that Hayward had acted with malice. I shouldn't have to tell you we said no on that. So while we made Hayward pay the $120K, we could have been harsh as hell on him. Between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, it took us about three and a half hours to deliberate the lousy verdict.
The judge was a swell gal named Joanne O’Donnell, or Josie for short. She was a very even-tempered woman who kept things moving along. Not like my last judge. The last time I was on jury duty (January-February 2004), I was stuck on this case that lasted about five hundred thousand years. Coincidentally, it was on the 4th floor of the downtown courthouse, just down the hall from the courtroom I was in this time. And the judge for that case was this white-haired codger who was always making you feel lousy whenever he talked. I mean even if he was trying to be funny, he just wasn’t. He couldn’t help making the entire courtroom feel depressed. That’s the thing about judges, I’ve learned, is that either they’re born with a sense of humor or they’re not. If they’re not, no matter how hard they try to be funny, they will do nothing but make you feel lousy and depressed.
And now here are some classic moments from the week of jury duty. I swear like hell that all of these moments really happened.
-One classic moment came fairly early in the trial. The plaintiff’s lawyer, Mr. Lippo, was in the middle of questioning his own client. He kept looking at the clock while doing so. It was around 11:35 a.m. when he finally said: “I’m sorry, Your Honor, I thought I could make it to the noon lunch break, but I can’t. Could we take a five-minute bathroom break? Starbucks is causing me problems.” And then Judge Josie said: “Well, I’ll tell you what. We’ll take an early recess at 11:45, so if you could struggle for the next 10 minutes…” And then Mr. Lippo said: “Thanks, Your Honor. I think I can make it.” And then for the next 10 minutes Mr. Lippo continued asking his client questions from behind the podium, fidgeting like a madman. Good ol' Josie. You gotta hand it to her. Accommodating as hell.
-During a short afternoon break one time, I was in the bathroom. And then this guy comes in all dressed in a suit and everything, and he just starts talking to me about the divorce he’s going through. He said something like: “Whatever you do, don’t get married! There’s two kinds of people in the world: the smart man and the wise man. The smart man only learns by making mistakes. The wise man knows ahead of time not to make them. So I’ll be the smart man, the man who learned the hard way never to get married. And you’ll be the wise man. I’m telling you never to get married, so you’ll know ahead of time not to make that mistake.”
-And then this other time, I was heading outside for my lunch break. For my lunch break I would always go outside to that great huge courtyard next to the courthouse with the huge fountain and fifty thousand or so concrete benches. So I was heading out this one time for lunch. So what I did was, I went out through the sliding glass doors and no sooner did I start going down the steps than I saw a well dressed middle-aged woman standing at the curb shouting at someone across the street. She was addressing someone named Trey. So I kept looking across the street, trying like a madman to follow her line of sight, but for the life of me I could not see anyone. There were cars going by, but she wasn’t glaring at any one car or anything. She was just glaring at a very particular spot and saying things like: “HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO RAISE A CHILD IN THE MILLENIUM?!” No, really, she said exactly that. “YOU’RE A SENIOR CITIZEN, TREY!” the middle-aged woman said. And then she’d take a few steps back toward the courthouse entrance, spot her reflection in the sliding glass doors, and start yelling again. At herself. Anyway, perhaps that’s not a classic moment, but more of a sad moment. You take people who yell a lot, at themselves, or at invisible people across the street for instance. If you think about it, chances are good it won’t be a classic moment but more of a moment that makes you feel lousy and depressed.
-And then there was this one time during a break that I was walking around the hallways of the courthouse like a madman looking for a mail drop for my Netflix DVDs. So what I finally did was, I went to the Information window, but there was a lousy line. Luckily, though, there was a touchscreen kiosk right next to the Information window that helps you find things inside the courthouse, like mailboxes for instance. Unfortunately, however, I couldn’t locate the mailboxes using the touchscreen kiosk. But while I was slowly figuring that out, a guy just walked up to the Information window and was like: “Can you tell me the closest place I can go to get married? I’m talking about the closest goddam spot from this point where I can get married.” And then the woman behind the window mumbled something I couldn’t hear, and the guy was like, “Really? I have to go that far to get married?” I didn’t hear what happened after that, as I’d given up on the kiosk and asked a janitor where to find the mailbox. As it turned out, there was a mail slot on each and every floor that is part of one long chute leading to the first floor mailbox. Unfortunately, however, the slots were too small for my Netflix DVDs, so I had to walk down to the first floor where the chute ended at this huge metal box mounted on the wall right by the security checkpoint. That huge box was the only place in that entire goddam courthouse that was big enough for my Netflix DVDs.
-And here’s one classic moment spread out over every single day I was there. It really kills me how, when you’re confronted with something that interrupts your life and routines, such as jury duty, you establish a routine to get through it. This applies especially to creatures of habit like myself. And this further applies to my morning routine during jury duty. The courthouse generously paid for the subway fare (I took the Red Line from NoHo to the Civic Center), but the catch was this. The NoHo parking lot, which has about seventy or so million parking spaces, was completely filled up by seven a.m. So I had to get there before seven, which meant I was at the courthouse by seven-thirty-ish, which meant I had a good solid two and a half lousy goddam hours to kill before the courtroom opened. So what I did was, I went up to the top floor of the courthouse (ninth floor), which has a cafeteria called Top of the Court. So I’d go there and read and eat breakfast and sip coffee and sit at a table by the glass doors that open up to a wide walkway that surrounds the cafeteria on all four sides and affords nice views of downtown. Now here's what really killed me about that. I’d be dressed all casually in jeans while all around me at most of the tables were these serious as hell lawyers getting an early start to their day, decked out all professional in their suits and whatnot. I mean there they all are, scribbling away like madmen on their yellow legal pads. And some of them would be meeting with clients, who’d also be very nicely dressed and looking serious as hell. But not me. There I was in my old, torn, shabby-looking jacket, my jeans, and my awful goddam juror badge dangling from my jacket collar. Simply gorgeous. And the funny thing was, if a lawyer was meeting with a client at a table not too far from me, they didn’t seem to care that I could hear each and every syllable coming out of their lousy mouths about the lousy cases they were working on. And these cases did sound lousy, mostly of a financial nature. It didn’t seem to matter if someone was being sued, getting divorced, it didn’t matter. The conversations always devolved into a lousy goddam financial nature.
I'll bet you can't guess what play opened at the Ahmanson Theatre right across the street from the courthouse, just a few months later. 12 Angry Men. If that doesn't kill you, nothing will. And what's more, it had that big fat funny as hell guy who played Norm in Cheers. I shouldn't have to tell you that I saw it, but I will, and I did. The realism was simply amazing. I mean that’s what it’s like, a buncha people talking over each other. Loudly. And soon after that, I got the movie version with Henry goddam Fonda. From goddam Netflix.
