Well, jury duty came to a conclusion last night, after about 4 hours of deliberation on the issue. The final verdict was exactly the way I thought it should go. I was a little proud of myself, in the fact that I did not hesitate to speak my mind on certain points, because I had really strong opinions about what happened.

The plaintiff, a former employee (and former LLC member) of a company was fired. After being fired, the company went through some changes that he opposed. Needing money, the company made what is called a “capital call”, or a request for cash. If a person in an LLC fails to meet the call, they are dropped as a member. The plaintiff made two of his contributions, then refused to make the final one, and as a result, was dropped. His claim was that the company made the calls simply to force him out. The evidence showed that this was speculation at best! He also hired a financial analyst to determine the value of his lost share. Even though the company was 6 million dollars in debt at the time, he determined that if the changes to the company had not been made (the company was losing money even before the changes were made), that it would have turned a profit of over 8 million dollars. Again, speculation. As a result, the plaintiff determined that because he was supposedly “forced out” he should be reimbursed 1.2 million dollars.

The next claim was, IMO, a valid one. When the plaintiff went from being an employee of the company to CEO and a member of the LLC, he began receiving guaranteed payments rather than a salary, which meant that regular witholdings should not have been held out of his check. It was withheld anyway, and was never given back to the plaintiff. He was asking for a return of this money.

Lastly, the company had a counter claim against him, for the fact that during his tenure as CEO, he cost the company many thousands of dollars due to his own incompetence. Not going into the details, the evidence clearly showed that this man was a moron at the very least, and greedy, attempting to suck everything from this company he could. We were allowed to award whatever monetary compensation to the defendants that we chose.

I could write a comic snippet about each of the defendants, the plaintiff, and definitely the lawyers, but I will refrain. That would end up being about a 15 page post, lol.

We retired to the jury room, and amid much confusion about the instructions (they seemed really simple to me!), we finally started voting. On the case of the improperly withheld tax money, I voted that this should be awarded him. In the case of the 1.2 million dollars, I voted in favor of the company.

The last section, the counter claim against the plaintiff, was a matter of debate. How much, if any, should the company receive due to the mistakes of the plaintiff. The idea of myself and one other juror (no one seemed to want to speak up about this one), was to award them the amount of the tax withholdings awarded the plaintiff in the first verdict. I told them that this was how I was going to vote, and everything decided that this would be a good idea. So, we voted to reward the company 22,000.00, which in return cancelled out any damages the plaintiff may have received.

Hehe, we gave everyone nothing for their four days in court.

I am tired, quite about more knowledgeable about how companies run, and finances are managed, and it may be a few days before I stop using words like “deficit” and “evidence” everyday. lol

Well, there is the summary of the jury duty. Exciting huh?