Alternative Dispute Resolution: Summary Jury Trial

Disclaimer: The following case background and solution are meant for educational purposes only. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

In re NLO, Inc.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
5 F.3d 154 (1993)

Case Background

“NLO ran a uranium­ facility. It was sued by former employees who they suffered injuries because ‘NLO had intentionally or negligently exposed them to hazardous levels of radioactive materials, increasing their risk of cancer and subjecting them to emotional distress.’ The trial court ordered that a summary jury trial be held and that it would be open to the public. NLO petitioned the appeals court to vacate the district court order to participate in the summary jury trial before the matter could be tried in regular court. (Meiners, Ringleb, and Edwards, 2000, p. 115-116).”

Summary Jury Trial

A summary jury trial is a form of mini-trial that employs a jury and is held after discovery in the event that a case is not settled before trial. Summary jury trials save time and expense for the plaintiff and the defendant, yet they are not mandatory. Summary jury trials are not technically due process per se but are a form of arbitration–that is, they are not adjudication but an effort to help the parties to case settle the dispute outside formal court proceedings at a substantial cost savings to the tax paying public. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), by its very nature, requires voluntary consent to begin the process or agreement in a contract that specifies ADR will be the means of resolving any disputes. Consider a summary judgment trial between two publicly-traded companies: the confidentiality of the proceedings of a summary jury trial could be very important in terms of publicity, effect on public stock price, protecting trade secrets and the potential for biasing the pool of potential jurors, assuming that local courts would have jurisdiction over the case.

The primary reason that NLO did not want to have a summary jury trial in the case above may have been that they were not legally required to participate in one, as the judge in the trial court had so ordered, and that going to a public summary jury trial, regardless of the outcome, would substantially remove the benefits of settling the case out of court. Perhaps they did not want the limited evidence associated with information exchange made available to the public, which would not be enough to defend them in the court of public opinion and would just cause negative publicity. An open summary jury trial might provide confidential information to the public that could increase business risks and open the company up to future class action lawsuits by the community nearby the uranium processing facility. Until a dispute goes to trial, no such risk exists, and so a public summary jury trial is substantially less attractive as a means of ADR.


Reference

Meiners, R.E., Ringleb, A.H., & Edwards, F.L. (2000). The legal environment of business (7th Ed.). New York: West Legal Studies in Business.