Judge upholds verdict despite juror’s amnesia

BRIDGEPORT - A juror’s sudden case of amnesia is no reason to forget about the jury’s verdict, a judge ruled Friday, upholding a $225,000 award for a local truck driver in his wrongful termination lawsuit against an Arkansas trucking company.Dwight Daley was ready to cheer when a Superior Court jury deliberated only a few hours before agreeing Daley was wrongly fired by the J.B. Hunt 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.”“The fact that, after the lengthy deliberations and the process rendering and acceptance of the verdict, a juror does not remember those events does not mean that they did not take place in accordance with our laws,” Judge William Rush ruled.“The judge made the appropriate ruling,” said Daley’s lawyer, Francis Burke.Christopher Hodgson, the lawyer for the trucking company, could not be reached for comment. Trucking company officials did not return calls for comment.“A defendant has a due process right to a trial by jurors who are mentally competent,” Hodgson previously stated.Daley, 46, of Bridgeport, 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 and just 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.The female juror, who was identified as Juror X, became upset after being told the jury had announced its verdict the previous day and said she had no recollection of the end of deliberations or the announcement of the verdict.In a letter to the court she stated: “I came in today to finish deliberation and found to my surprise that a verdict had been reached. I do not remember end of deliberations/verdict from yesterday. I don’t have a history of memory gaps that I am aware of.”The juror’s letter continues that she disagrees with the verdict and will be getting an evaluation for dementia/Alzheimer which had been recommended by a care giver because the juror’s mother had early onset of Alzheimer’s disease.In his ruling, Judge Rush pointed out that Juror X signed in as present on the morning the verdict was rendered and when the roll call was taken and the verdict read all the jurors, including Juror X, responded that it was their verdict.“If the juror cannot recall the deliberations and the rendition of the verdict it is doubtful that Juror X could reliably recall the state of her competency during the trial itself and any further inquiry would involve the court directly in the process of the deliberations,” the judge stated.