Earlier this week I served on a jury. It was a civil case, where the Party of the First Part (to use terminology from A Night At the Opera) was suing the Party of the Second Part for damages over a breech of contract. Specifically, the Party of the First Part alleged (and tried to prove) that the Party of the Second Part had failed to pay what was agreed in the contract for services that the Party of the First Part rendered. Why this came to trial is that the parties only had a verbal contract and they disputed what the terms of that contract were.

It was, in some ways, a very strange case. The lawyer for the Defense, in his opening argument, wrote several dates on a whiteboard and told us that the case would hinge on these dates. Those dates were never mentioned again. The Defense claimed that the contract was for a lump sum payment and that payment was made. The Plaintiff claimed that the contract was for a day rate and that this resulted in money that was still owed. It never seemed to occur to the Plaintiff to bring into evidence (even through testimony) what the day rate was nor how many days were worked, so even though (in some sense) we found for the Plaintiff, it was impossible to award any damages because precisely no evidence was presented that damages were actually owed under the day-rate theory. (This is an over-simplification, for several reasons, including some jurors firmly believing that the agreement was for a day rate capped at the total amount on the bid sheet. However, what allowed us to come to a verdict was that there were some documents including invoices and time sheets entered into evidence, but when we totaled them up for ourselves, the number we came to suggested that the Party of the First Party had been overpaid. There was a further complication that the invoices were put together by a woman who did the invoicing for the Party of the First Part who testified that she didn’t know what the agreement was, she just put together invoices as best she could, and when there were problems she’d have their operations manager handle it. The invoices that the Plaintiff entered into evidence were not supported by the time sheets that they entered into evidence, and the portions that were resulted in much lower charges than were paid, even when we added in items on the invoice which contradicted the testimony of the operations manager for the Party of the First Part.) At one point the lawyer for the Party of the Second Part tried to get a witness who had been operations manager for the Party of the First Part to admit that some numbers on a bid sheet were in his handwriting, which he denied, and the lawyer even tried to argue that the 9s were nearly identical between this bid sheet and one he candidly admitted was in his handwriting. A few hours later the witness for the Party of the Second Part candidly admitted that the writing on the bid sheet at issue was in his handwriting. That is, the lawyer for the Party of the Second Part argued with a witness over something which was soon contradicted by his own witness!

It is well known that the best way to convince somebody of one’s version of what happened is to present a narrative which explains all of the known facts. Neither side tried to present a narrative of what actually happened which even tried to explain the facts that were available. They just argued over various scattershot bits and pieces then dumped the whole mess on us.

It was a bit incomprehensible how the case could have been presented as badly as it was by both sides. That said, since the case only came to trial because both parties were incompetent at running their businesses back at the time the agreement was made and acted upon, it should not be surprising that they were not competent at picking good lawyers, either.