Jury duty was so amazing on Friday! The morning was a little slow at the plaintiffs were wrapping up their case. For three days we had heard the same account of the story told by several different witnesses, all covering the same information. Boring!

Then in the afternoon, the defense attorney presented his case. Well, then the fireworks started to fly. First was a doctor who had examined the medical records of the plaintiffs and felt the treatment was excessive and the examining doctor incompetent. The plaintiff's cross-exam was blistering! This lawyer totally ripped the doctor a new one and did everything possible to destroy his credibility. It was brutal.

But the next witness for the defense was even more intriguing. This was a third party, not involved with the case, who had seen the accident (I shouldn't be talking about this yet) and gave totally contradictory testimony compared to the plaintiffs. And he was very credible, too! The jury was astounded. When the plaintiffs cross-examined this witness he gained in credibility and in fact the plaintiff's case was weakened further. Finally they just stopped asking questions of this witness. The judge excused us for the weekend but told us we should get the case for deliberations by Monday. Hopefully this jury can render a verdict by Tuesday morning and be done with this case. That would be a nice thing.

The good news for me is that my supervisors at UCLA were totally supportive when I told them I was on jury duty. They are both really sincere when it comes to civic duty so it will be no problem for me to miss the new session startup and they said they would work out a good schedule for me. Hooray!