Call me "Foreman Scottydude!" That's right -- I'm the foreman of the jury. Our trial finally reached closing arguments today and the case was delivered to the jury. We deliberated for a little less than two hours this afternoon and reached a partial verdict. Now we have to calculate the damages and awards. That should go fairly easily; it's just a lot of number crunching.

It was interesting to start the deliberation phase because nobody was sure what to do. For a long time we just started discussing various aspects of the case that had been on our minds. A lot of the session was spent just venting our thoughts and impressions since we had been stifled for so long against discussing the case.

Finally, since no one else wanted to do it, I volunteered to be the jury foreman. Then we got down to the business of actually deciding liability. At first we couldn't decide. It was a difficult choice to make, but after some discussion and reasoning-out various situations, most of us agreed on a basic scenario of what happened in the accident. Then the other decisions started coming easier.

The court made us stop at 4:30, but most of us would have continued longer if we'd been allowed. I really wanted to have tomorrow off. Oh well, we'll hopefully finish deliberations and announce our verdicts by lunch time. Then we can have a nice free afternoon. What will I do with myself? Oh yeah, probably get ready for UCLA, which starts on Wednesday. Blech! :-)

I'd much rather go see the Hitchcock double-feature at the Beverly. How can I come up with $6 bucks though. I'm dirt-ass poor! Oh well, Wednesday is payday. I'll be feeling a lot better then hopefully.