Opinion
handed down September 20, 2016
In Smotherman
v. Cass Regional Medical Center, the Supreme Court of Missouri addressed
the issue of whether a juror’s testimony regarding the extent to which
misconduct affected jury deliberations is sufficient to overcome the
presumption of prejudice created by the misconduct.[1] As discussed below, the court’s decision
represents a step back from recent decisions that attempted to clarify the
extrinsic evidence exemption to the Mansfield Rule and ignores past decisions
regarding the weight that should be assigned to such testimony.
I. Facts and Holding
The original issue in Smotherman involved an injury the plaintiff suffered
after she slipped and fell in a bathroom on the defendant’s premises.[2] The plaintiff alleged that the cause of her
fall was the position of a soap dispenser, which had leaked soap onto the
floor.[3] The case was tried before a jury, which
returned a verdict in favor of the defendant.[4] The ultimate controversy arose after
plaintiff’s counsel discovered after the trial, one of the jurors, during
deliberations, had used the Internet to find out what the weather forecast was
for the day the plaintiff slipped and fell.[5] Because the juror found that there was
significant snowfall on the date of the injury, he decided that the soap was
not the cause of the plaintiff’s fall and that the fall was instead likely
caused by melted snow on the floor of the bathroom.[6] This evidence was not introduced in any way
by either party during the trial.[7] While other jurors remembered a comment being
made during deliberations regarding the snow, they testified that the weather
was “immaterial to their deliberations.”[8]
Plaintiff filed a motion for a new trial based
on the juror’s misconduct.[9] The motion was overruled.[10] Ultimately, the issue on appeal was whether
the trial court erred in overruling the plaintiff’s motion for a new trial on
the grounds that the jury engaged in misconduct.
II. Legal Background
Under Missouri law, a juror’s
testimony about juror misconduct is “generally not admissible to impeach the
jury’s verdict.”[11] This is referred to as the Mansfield Rule.[12] The Mansfield Rule, as originally applied,
prevented jurors from impeaching their own verdicts.[13] The rule was adopted as a result of courts
being untrusting of jurors who would testify about their own misconduct.[14]
The history of the rule as interpreted by
Missouri courts has been criticized as being “unclear and often inconsistent.”[15] Originally, a qualified version of the rule
was adopted in jurors’ affidavits to explain extrinsic evidence showing juror
misconduct, and it was admissible only in cases where life and liberty were at
stake.[16] Later, courts moved away from this version of
the rule in favor of a strict application of the rule, prohibiting jurors from
impeaching their verdicts in all types of cases.[17]
Even later, Missouri courts began to liberalize
the Mansfield Rule and adopted certain exceptions to the rule.[18] For example, the courts began applying the
“extraneous evidence” exception, which allowed a juror to testify regarding
whether a juror had gathered evidence on his or her own or had related that
information to other jurors.[19] This rule was clarified in the Supreme Court
of Missouri’s decision Travis v. Stone,[20] in which the court held that
once a juror establishes through testimony that he or she engaged in misconduct
by relying on extrinsic evidence, the burden shifts to the opposing party to
prove that no actual prejudice resulted from the misconduct.[21]
Under the exception as it applies
today, even if it can be proved that a juror committed misconduct by engaging
in extraneous research, such a finding does not automatically entitle a moving
party to a new trial.[22] Rather, such a finding merely can raise a presumption
of prejudice.[23] The burden then shifts to the opposing party
to rebut that presumption.[24] In order to be prejudicial, the extraneous
evidence that was obtained by the juror who committed the misconduct must be
“material to the consequential facts of the case.”[25]
III. Instant Decision
In this case, the trial court held
that the conduct of the juror who engaged in extraneous research was sufficient
to raise a presumption of prejudice.[26] However, the court ultimately found that this
presumption was effectively rebutted by the testimony of eight jurors, who
stated that the extraneous research did not affect their verdict.[27]
The Supreme Court of Missouri, while stating
that “every party is entitled to a fair
trial, as a practical matter, our jury system cannot guarantee every party a perfect
trial,”[28]
ultimately held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding
that the defendant successfully rebutted the presumption of prejudice caused by
the juror’s misconduct.[29]
IV. Comment
As the dissent explains in Smotherman, the exception to the Mansfield Rule, as recognized and
clarified by Travis, stems from the
“recognition that a juror’s independent factual research is uniquely
prejudicial.”[30]
The decision in Travis has been described as one in a line of cases that expanded
the exception to the Mansfield Rule in Missouri.[31] By upholding the trial court’s decision that
the affidavits of other jurors can overcome the prejudice created by a juror
engaging in extraneous research, the majority’s decision in Smotherman represents a step back from
the rule as outlined by Travis.
In Travis,
the court reversed the denial of a motion for a new trial after a single juror
acquired extraneous information; the juror did not share that information with
the rest of the jury.[32] The court held that even though the offending
juror testified that the information did not influence her decision, the independent
research was prejudicial due to the subtle or even subconscious affect that the
information may have had on the juror, without the juror being aware of the
prejudicial affect.[33]
The majority in Smotherman distinguished the case from Travis by arguing that, unlike in Travis, all nine jurors testified or submitted affidavits, stating
that the extra information did not influence their deliberations, whereas in Travis, only the offending juror
testified that it did not.[34] However, this argument
ignores the principle outlined in Travis.
The reason that independent factual
research is uniquely prejudicial is because it may change a juror’s mind in
such a way that the juror may not even be aware of it. Particularly in this case, the information
that it was snowing on the day that the plaintiff fell in the bathroom may have
subconsciously convinced the offending juror, or the rest of the jurors, that
the fall was not the fault of the defendant, even though the juror testified
that it did not actually change his mind.
The majority’s reasoning in this way accepts the
offending juror’s own later testimony, minimizing the effect of his misconduct
as probative. This is problematic not
only for the reasons discussed in Middleton,[35] in which the court held
that jurors have a tendency to minimize the effect of their own misconduct,[36] but also for the
reasoning established above. If jurors
are not aware of the degree to which outside evidence may have affected their
verdict, then their own testimony regarding the degree to which their
misconduct affected their verdict has little, if any, probative value. Thus, the majority’s decision not only ignores
the likelihood that a juror will underestimate the extent of his or her own
misconduct, but it also represents a step away from previous decisions
regarding what weight should be given to the testimony of a juror who commits
misconduct.
-
Brandon Wood.
[1] Smotherman
v. Cass Reg’l Med. Ctr., No. SC 95464, 2016 WL 5109891, at *1 (Mo. Sept. 20,
2016) (en banc).
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
at *2.
[4] Id.
at *1.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
at *2.
[7] Id.
at *1.
[8] Id.
at *2.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
at *3.
[12] Id.
[13] Jason R. Mudd, Note, Liberalizing the Mansfield Rule in Missouri:
Making Sense of the Extraneous Evidence Exception After Travis v. Stone, 69 Mo. L. Rev. 779, 779 (2004).
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] Pratte v. Coffman, 33 Mo. 71, 78 (1862).
[17] State v. Branstetter, 65 Mo. 149, 156–57 (1877).
[18] Mudd, supra note 13, at 787.
[19] Stotts v. Meyer, 822 S.W.2d 887, 890
(Mo. Ct. App. 1991).
[20] 66 S.W.3d 1 (Mo. 2002) (en banc) (per
curiam).
[21] Id.
at *3.
[22] State v. Stephens, 88 S.W.3d 876, 883
(Mo. Ct. App. 2002).
[23] Travis,
66 S.W.3d at 4.
[24] Id.
[25] Stephens,
88 S.W.3d at 883–84.
[26] Smotherman v. Cass Reg’l Med. Ctr., No.
SC 95464, 2016 WL 5109891, at *4 (Mo. Sept. 20, 2016) (en banc).
[27] Id.
[28] Id.
at *1 (quoting Fleshner v. Pepose Vision Inst.,
P.C., 304 S.W.3d 81, 87 (Mo. 2010) (en banc)).
[29] Id.
[30] Id.
at *4 (Teitelman, J., dissenting).
[31] See
Mudd, supra note 13, at 788–89.
[32] Travis v. Stone, 66 S.W.3d 1, *3–4 (Mo. 2002) (en banc) (per curiam).
[33] Id.
at *5.
[34] Smotherman,
2016 WL 5109891, at *4.
[35] Middleton v. Kan. City Pub. Serv. Co., 152 S.W.2d 154, 160 (Mo. 1941).
[36] Id.
at 160.
