Access to Justice: Your Right to a Jury Trial

For nearly 30 years, I’ve been representing people injured by the negligence of others, helping them to receive reasonable and adequate compensation from corporations and insurance companies. Like other pro-victim, pro-survivor attorneys, I’ve had many prospective clients (up to 70% of them) apologize to me and say they’re reluctant to pursue anything because they’re “not the kind of person who files lawsuits’.” This mindset is the result of BILLIONS of dollars spent by corporate America, the Chamber of Commerce, and insurance companies to convince people that personal injury lawsuits are all frivolous and that they should be ashamed for asserting their rights.

In addition to being wrong, corporate America is astonishingly hypocritical. If anyone is guilty of “lawsuit abuse,” it’s the huge corporations that constantly sue one another for obscene amounts of money over minor details.

Thankfully, your right to a jury trial to hold wrongdoers accountable is protected by the Constitution. The Seventh Amendment reads:

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

The State of Michigan also protects your right to a trial by jury in civil cases. In spite of corporate America’s repeated attempts to limit that right, either through “tort-reform” legislation or misleading propaganda, dedicated trial lawyers around the country are fighting to keep the courthouse doors open for injured people.