Danny Vincent successfully challenged a defense verdict in the Georgia Court of Appeals, which ruled it was reversible error not to strike a biased juror for cause.
The juror was an attorney at a local firm and regularly represented the defendant physician’s insurance company. The juror acknowledged a large risk of bias, but the trial court still refused to remove him for cause, forcing the plaintiff to use a peremptory strike.
The Court of Appeals unanimously reversed, holding that the plaintiff was denied her statutory right to a full panel of impartial jurors and remanded the case for a new trial. The ruling is significant because it clarified for the first time that the Supreme Court’s prior ruling in Willis v. State—a criminal case under a different jury statute—did not control the jury selection process in civil cases.
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