For those who have not actually attended a jury trial, the relative roles of the judge and the jury in a civil case can be confusing. In simple terms, in a jury trial the judge makes decisions regarding the law, and the jury makes decisions regarding the facts. That means the ultimate fact decisions – about whether the health care provider was negligent, whether the negligence caused the injury, and how much money should be awarded – are made by the jury.
Because the judge decides all issues about evidence, she or he can be very important in determining what evidence the jury hears in the first place. There are often disputes about whether a particular piece of evidence or document is admissible, and the judge makes those decisions. Sometimes the decisions are made before the trial starts, as each side submits “motions in limine” to seek advance rulings on what elements of evidence will be admissible or even what kinds of arguments can be made by the attorneys.
Non-lawyers are often surprised that some evidence that seems important to them is not admissible. For example, the fact the doctor has been sued many times before is not admissible to help prove his negligence in a case. Or the fact a doctor lost his hospital privileges after the claimed negligence occurred. In general, if a hospital makes changes after-the-fact to avoid similar problems, this can’t be used as evidence of negligence. The reason is that the law wants to encourage people and institutions to correct dangerous problems or conditions, and allowing evidence of changes to be admitted into evidence would discourage those efforts.
The judge also makes decisions about what instructions are to be given to the jury at the end of the trial, and the jury is charged with following those instructions in making its decisions about the facts. In Washington, as in other states, there is a published set of “pattern jury instructions” that have been approved by committees of judges and lawyers for use in certain fact situations or for certain claims. For example, there is are instructions that defines “standard of care”, “negligence,” and “causation.”
So the answer to the question in the title of this blog is “both the judge and the jury are important in a medical negligence trial.” But the real decision makers about whether you win or lose a trial are the twelve people sitting in the jury box. How those jurors are selected, and how arguments are fashioned to persuade them, is the topic for another blog post.
