New York Negligence Cases-Facebook & Twitter Jury Instructions?

In negligence lawsuits in New York, attorneys must pick impartial jurors to sit in judgment and determine whether the injured victims' version of what happened is more likely right than wrong. As the trial gets underway, the trial judge typically gives the jury preliminary instructions about what they can and cannot do as jurors.

One of the most common instructions in New York is that jurors should not discuss the case with either their fellow jurors, or with anyone outside the court room. They are often told not to go to the library to research the issues in the case. With today's prevalence of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and Google as the king of search engines it becomes hard for a juror not to have the curiosity to find out more information about the lawyers in their case, the litigants, and even the judge.

Can you imagine jurors going home after hearing testimony and then going online to Google, Facebook and Twitter to see what the lawyers and parties to the lawsuit have posted? Do you think comments posted online by litigants in their "private" lives might have any impact on a juror? Put aside for the moment the juror's disregard for the Courts' stern warning to do no research online about the case or the people involved.

Should pre-trial instructions to jurors in New York now include specific warnings that they should not do a search on Facebook or Twitter for the parties to the lawsuit? Should they be told not to Google the lawyers? Is the judge immune from having his decisions exposed by inquisitive and internet savvy jurors?

In my opinion, most of today's jurors who come into Court in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, Nassau & Suffolk are smart enough to know about Google, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The question that always arises is: Even though jurors are told not to do any outside independent research on the issues in the case, and told not to investigate the parties, how do you really know whether they listen?

The difficulty with our system is that you don't. As an attorney, I must rely on a juror's statements and assurances that they will uphold the law that the trial judge gives them. Having said that, I still believe that jurors should be reminded not to go online and research the issues, the litigants, the parties or even the judge.