Serving my Community

A month ago I got a letter from Bonneville county that I was summoned for jury duty. With everything going one Jury duty was the last thing I needed. With my luck guess who got picked to serve on a jury. Yours truly. I had to go in Friday 2^nd to see if I had to serve and did not get picked. Then I had to go in on Tuesday and did. After I got picked I went to talk to Greg to let him know what I was told. The trial should be two days and I would work before and after jury duty to make sure I didn’t lose a lot of my pay check since I was not sure if I would get paid for it. I worked the day after Thanksgiving to save my personal time just in case. But luck would have it that I might not be able to since the take over of the company. So after lunch I went back and we went in to hear opening statements. The two lawyers Brent Gordon (Idaho Fall’s people should have heard of him since he as a ton on commercials) and Rocky Wixon. Let me explain a littler about the case first. A lady was in car wreak and had neck and back pains. She went to a chiropractor for a year and half. (66 times) she never asked for a bill. Jut looking at her you could tell she is quite and naive. The bill when she was done was over 10,000. She hired Brent Gordon to help her since her settlement would not cover that. She was suing the Dr for fraud and he was suing her for breach of contract and suing Brent Gordon for with holding payment. Since Brent Gordon got the insurance company to pay more on the settlement and the money was sitting in a bank account with his firm. Brent Gordon was up first and started by saying the chiropractor dr.’s where just witch doctors. And that came the first objection from Wixon. He called for a side bar where the go off to the side and discuses the problem. Then the judge dismissed and we went back to the jury room to wait while they worked it out. After 3 hours in there the Marshall told us we could go home for the day and be back at 9 the next day. So I went back to work and worked until 10.

The next day I went in at 7 and left around 8:30 to go back to court. We sat in the jury room for another 2 and half hours waiting for all the monitions the two lawyers were trying to pass. As a result of this we got to know each other really well. The funny thing was that the marshal keeping telling us not to talk about the case and we were like how can you discuses the case when all we heard was about 19 words the first day. Finally we got back in the court room heard opening statements then we heard from the lady we were in there for a hour and half. Then went to lunch. Came back and heard from Brent Gordon (he called him self up to be a witness) then Wixon called the dr. up as a witness. By then it was almost 4 and we got to go. I went back to work and worked until 10. I had to talk to Greg again to let him know I had one more day.

On Thursday I got to work at 7 and worked until 9 since I didn’t have to be there until 9:30. We sat in the jury room until 11:30 while waiting for the judge and lawyers to come up with the jury instructions. We went into the court room and heard closing statements. Broke for lunch (the court house paid for our lunch that day) and that was when we deliberated about the case. This part was fun. We picked a spokesman, his name was Chad Judy and I was kind of his assistant, since we had a whole binder of medical records and I was sitting next to him. After about an hour and half, we came to verdict. We found the Dr to be not guilty for fraud. We found the lady Guilty of breach of contract and award the dr. part of the bill. He felt he took her fro granted and when he had her sign all the paper that the settlement went to him he started to use computerized testing that was more expense thinking the insurance would cover it. We took the bill that took off what he was already paid and took out the amount of the computerized test and since we felt he did take her naïve personality for granted and that we took off another 20% and that was hoe much she owed him for his services. When we were done the Marshall told us he had never seen a trial where the jury spent more time in the jury room and then the court room before we could deliberated and where the trial had so may motions. We all laughed at the lawyers since both were basically in a pissing match with each other and that all of this could have been avoid. But you could tell from the first that the lawyers didn’t get along. We all felt sorry for the lady involved but she should have keep up on what it was costing instead of thing the insurance would cover it. After that I went back to work again until 10. then on Friday Greg had Mark and Shawn to get everything set up for the take over and so I had to order lunch for all the management. Greg was kind enough to order me lunch as well. When I clocked out on Friday I had 38 and half hours. It was a busy week for me.

I did find out that I do get paid for jury duty so this check will be nice since I get the 8 hours more for each day