More on jury trials in construction cases?
Whose to blame when the jury gets it wrong?
So, when juries misunderstand what a lawyer is trying to tell them through an expert, who is at fault? Is the problem with the jury being unable to understand, or is the problem with the attorney and/or experts being unable to communicate a coherent message?
I do not think it is a stretch to claim it is more often the latter. We should not reform/deform the jury system to make the world a safer place for incompetent lawyers and their incompetent experts. Instead, we should better understand how to present a clear, coherent message through our witnesses. We do not need better jurors: we need better lawyers, better experts, and - perhaps - better judges.
There is a problem in allowing people with specialized training to make decisions binding upon society as a whole. As Lord Chesterton noted long ago:
"Our civilization has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. [When it] wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing around. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity."
G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles, 67-68 (1910)