Truck driver wins lawsuit, or does he?

BRIDGEPORT - Dwight Daley was ready to cheer when a Superior Court jury deliberated only a few hours before awarding him $225,000 on his claim that he was wrongly fired by a trucking company.But his celebration was short lived when, a day after the verdict, one of the jurors came back to the courtroom and announced, “I’m ready to resume deliberations.”“There is an issue with one of the jurors,” Daley’s lawyer, Francis Burke, acknowledged without commenting further.“I’m going to let the judge take a look at it and go from there,” said Christopher Hodgson, the lawyer for the trucking company, J.B. Hunt Transport Inc.

On Wednesday, he filed a motion for a hearing to have the judge, William Rush, determine the competency of the juror.

“A defendant has a due process right to a trial by jurors who are mentally competent,” Hodgson’s motion states.

Daley had been employed by Hunt as a driver at Bushwick Steel since March 2011. In June 2011 he was injured in an accident while riding his motorcycle, according to court documents.

In July 2011, the documents state, he returned to work with a doctor’s note but was told by his supervisors he couldn’t return to work without authorizations from all his treating doctors. When he couldn’t get an appointment with one of the doctors he was fired, he claims.

Daley sued J.B. Hunt for misrepresentation. After a few hours of deliberation, the six-member jury on Aug. 11 of this year found in Daley’s favor and ordered the trucking company to pay him $200,000 in economic damages and $25,000 in non-economic damages.

But the following day, according to witness accounts and court papers, a juror on the case showed up at the Main Street courtroom contending that in fact the jury had not reached a verdict and that she was prepared to resume deliberations with them.