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Differential Treatment of Corporate Defendants by Juries: An Examination of the “Deep-Pockets” Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Robert J. MacCoun
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Abstract

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Evidence that juries treat corporate defendants less favorably than individual defendants is often cited in support of the widely held view that juries are biased against wealthy “deep-pocket” defendants. Such evidence confounds defendant wealth and defendant identity. In two juror simulation experiments involving citizens on jury duty, these factors were separated by manipulating whether the defendant was described as a poor individual, a wealthy individual, or a corporation; the defendant's assets were described identically in the latter two conditions. In Experiment 1, liability was significantly more likely, and awards were significantly greater, for corporate defendants than for wealthy individual defendants, but verdicts against poor versus wealthy individuals did not differ. In Experiment 2, awards were larger against wealthy individuals who engaged in commercial rather than personal activities, and awards in the personal activity condition were larger against corporations than wealthy individuals. There was little evidence for a defendant wealth effect on juror judgments. While juries do appear to treat corporations differently, the explanation may have more to do with citizens' views about the special risks and responsibilities of commercial activity.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , 1996 , pp. 121 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

This research was supported by Grant No. SES-8911778 from the Law and Social Science Program of the National Science Foundation and by the RAND Institute for Civil Justice. Portions of this research were presented at the annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, Amsterdam, 28 June 1991, and summarized in an Institute for Civil Justice issue paper (MacCoun 1993a). The author is grateful to the judges and staff of the Ventura County (CA) Superior Court for their generous cooperation; Manuela Olivia Balderrama-Small and Patricia Ebener for their assistance in data collection; Barbara Levitan, Mark Peterson, Peter Jacobsen, Charles Bennett, Ralph Duman, Thomas Lincoln, and Malcolm MacCoun for assistance in preparing the stimulus cases used in Experiment 1; Valerie Hans for providing the stimulus case adapted for Experiment 2; and Deborah Hensler, Jim Kahan, Norbert Kerr, Kevin McCarthy, Neil Vidmar, and several anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions.

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