I have heard many stories about juries making ridiculous awards to greedy plaintiffs making frivolous claims, etc. I always take these stories with a grain of salt, and here's why:

1. Juries are not required to give any explanation of their decisions. Any explanation of why a jury voted the way it did is strictly unofficial and likely conjectural. Even if an occasional juror speaks to the press, he or she is not speaking for the entire jury. Other jurors may have had different reasons for voting the same way.

2. Judges never talk to reporters.

3. Lawyers tend to present many arguments and many kinds of evidence during a trial, some serious and some frivolous. Even the lawyers may not know which arguments and which evidence were most persuasive.

4. Lawyers are biased. They are paid to be biased. They are ethically and legally required to represent their clients’ best interests, which means they are ethically required to be biased. This applies regardless of whether they are pleading a case in court or talking to a reporter. Furthermore, lawyers have personal reasons to be biased. Like everyone else, they don't like to admit defeat in a fair trial. Defeat suggests bad judgment—it suggests the lawyer should have accepted an out-of-court settlement or a plea bargain. The lawyers for the winning side are likely to believe that the jury was logical and responsible. The lawyers for the losing side are likely to believe the jury was biased, illogical, and emotional, and was unduly influenced by their opponent's weakest arguments.

5. Very few trials are covered by reporters that sit and listen to all the testimony. Reporters usually get their information by interviewing lawyers or other participants (but not judges and juries) after the fact, and by reading official court documents. They usually don’t get to see transcripts of testimony. (Transcripts are expensive to produce, and you get them only if you’re willing to pay for them.) Therefore reporters have no way of independently judging the credibility of witnesses, the relevance of evidence, etc. Their stories may be influenced by the bias of the lawyers they talk to. Good reporters will try to filter out bias, but they may or may not be successful.

6. Some civil trials are covered by specialized trade journals even though the mainstream media do not consider them newsworthy. When, for example, a bank is sued, the trial might be covered only by a trade journal that is written for bank managers. The resulting story will concentrate almost 100% on explaining the effect the decision will have on the banking industry, and little or nothing on the effect it will have on the public as a whole. And the "facts" in the story may come completely from one side of the lawsuit-the bankers and their lawyers.

7. Some trials do not attract any attention at all in the mainstream media until some politician, lobbying organization, or political columnist cites it in support of some political agenda, such as "tort reform." Then, if the political argument attracts enough attention, the mainstream media scramble to cover the story belatedly. Often the only information immediately available comes from press releases put out by a lobbying organization, so that slant gets reported first. Follow-up stories may include information from the trade journals, and still later stories may contain information gathered independently by reporters. Only then does information from the other side come out. "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." --Mark Twain

So when you hear a story about a stupid decision made by a jury, remember that probably you got it from a reporter who got it from a politician who got it from a lobbyist who got it from a trade journal that got it from the lawyers that represented the losing side. (Or maybe you got it from Jay Leno, who got it from his comedy writers, who got it from....)

At a time like this, it is good to ask, which is more likely: that the jury got it wrong or that the reporter got it wrong?

A quote attributed to Damon Runyon: "It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong - but that is the way to bet." I would add: Juries may not always be right, but that is the way to bet.