Librarian’s Reading Material Precipitates
a Motion for a New Trial
Citing new information about a juror’s recreational reading during breaks in a 1997 court case, lawyers for a Philadelphia-based chemical manufacturer are requesting a new trial.
Sharon A. Dennison, manager of the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Bustleton Avenue branch, was a juror during the trial of Rohm and Haas v. Continental Casualty, in which Rohm and Haas sued two insurance companies to recover environmental clean-up costs at two Superfund sites. According to the motion, Dennison was exposed to extraneous prejudicial information by reading Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action, the Legal Intelligencer reported January 2.
“This is not a case where a juror may merely have glanced at a newspaper or magazine article or been briefly exposed to something on television,” the motion stated. “Rather, during trial, a vocal and outspoken juror chose to read a long, detailed and highly prejudicial book about a case—also involving groundwater contamination allegedly caused by large corporations—which she described as ‘just like this case.’”
Although the jury decided for the insurers, trial judge Paul L. Jaffe later set the verdict aside and awarded $21 million in damages to Rohm and Haas. In May 1999, the Pennsylvania Superior Court reinstated the jury’s verdict. It was when a Rohm and Haas lawyer called Jaffe to tell him his ruling had been overturned that Jaffe revealed Dennison had made remarks about the book to him.
Dennison told American Libraries that her words had been twisted and that the details of the case in the book “had nothing to do with the trial.” However, one of the expert witnesses who appeared in the book was also called in the trial, and Dennison said she had remarked to the judge that that had impressed her. Regarding the motion’s charge that her exposure was “especially significant” because she had been outspoken during deliberations, Dennison stated, “I was not popular with the other jurors, and if I had given an opinion they would have turned the other way.”
Posted January 7, 2002.
|
