The Verdict Is In...

I finally finished with my jury duty yesterday - so glad it's over but it was really interesting to take part in a trial and be apart of our justice system. It's hard to describe the case in a nutshell but here's the gist of it - Back in 2004 a man named Mr. Golding was rear ended by a Republic garbage truck. He sustained neck injuries that resulted in a fusion of several vertebrae in his neck. Republic didn't want to pay for his injuries because they claimed that since he was 59 years old, he had degenerative issues with his neck and it was those issues that caused the need for his fusion - not the accident. They claimed that the accident couldn't have cause those injuries, etc. etc. They trotted out their experts and Mr. Golding's attorney trotted out theirs and in the end, the jury had to decide who and what information was accurate and then apply money damages to our findings. Needless to say, after several hours of deliberating (which was interesting in itself because we had a real strange lady on our jury!), we finally reached a verdict in favor of Mr. Golding and awarded him about $4.4 million. Sounds like a lot but there were past/future medical bills, past/future wages, and past/future pain & suffering to consider. And spinal fusions are about as painful as it comes. I would definitely recommend doing jury duty - it was worth it and it was only a few days of my time - it was inconvenient but I managed to get everything juggled around to do it so it all worked out. It's nice to be back to my regular life though - I think the people at my house prefer me here too! So now we're just getting through another week and then we will get to relax for a few days since the girls will be on Spring Break next week!! I'm sure we'll be doing all kinds of wild and crazy things so watch our blog to find out!