Deconstructing Juryless Fact-Finding in Civil Cases

Abstract

Compensatory damage caps mandate juryless fact-finding in common law-based civil cases and lessen the jury’s traditional and historic role as injury valuator. This Article explores juryless fact-finding in civil cases by turning to recent interpretations of the Sixth Amendment Criminal Jury Trial Clause at criminal sentencing. At first blush, compensatory damage caps and criminal sentencing appear to have little in common. Caps reduce a jury’s damage findings to a fixed amount. Some sentencing guidelines designated which facts are necessary to support a particular sentence. Yet, both remove the jury during a significant part of a civil or criminal case. In civil cases the jury is removed from the “damages” phase of the litigation; in criminal cases, from the “punishment” phase of the "criminal prosecution." As a result, compensatory damage caps and certain forms criminal sentencing guidelines lessen the jury’s role as fact-finder and intrude on the jury’s verdict or decree.Recent Sixth Amendment jurisprudence has recently rejected mandatory juryless fact-finding for purposes of fixing punishment at criminal sentencing hearings. Seventh Amendment jurisprudence remains undeveloped on the clash between caps and the civil jury, but the Sixth Amendment offers three lessons about common law criminal juries that should apply in the civil context. First, modern procedures cannot significantly alter certain common law characteristics of the jury trial right. Second, mandatory removal of the jury as the primary fact-finder was not authorized in common law cases. Third, a common law jury’s factual determinations were fully enforceable unless exceptional circumstances were presented. This Article urges adoption of cap alternatives that encourage individual review upon necessity. Such alternatives should also advance a states’ dual interest to protect both civilly liable defendants and severely injured plaintiffs.