Jurors in Longest Torrance Trial Learned, Slept, Argued, Made Friends

Some of them became friends and went shopping together.

They ended up knowing everything about one another’s jobs, kids and home lives.

They bickered over whether they should be allowed to smoke.

One lost his wife to cancer, and his fellow jurors helped him through a deep depression.

They gave each other rides when their cars broke down.

One sometimes fell asleep.

“I have never been put in a situation like that, where I was with the same 14 or 15 people for a whole year in a room as small as a bedroom,” said Chuck Arrasmith after this group--the jury for the longest trial in Torrance Superior Court history--again became a handful of individuals going their separate ways.

The jury determined liability and the damage award in a Rolling Hills landslide case that ended Feb. 24, more than 13 months after the trial began.

“We had every different type,” said Arrasmith, 39, the jury foreman. “The quiet types that never said anything to the types that were always saying something, whether you wanted them to or not. There were types that told jokes and types that didn’t think anything was funny.”

Some people might view a year on a jury, listening to endless hours of technical testimony, as some kind of confinement under the guise of civic duty, but not Arrasmith and several others on the jury.

“It was a nice diversion, a lot better than working,” said Melinda Brock of Torrance, a 29-year-old letter carrier with the U. S. Postal Service. “You get treated with respect, and people listen to you when you have something to say.”

Arrasmith said the trial--which lasted far longer than the three to four months jurors had been told to expect--caused little disruption in his personal life. He said the 1 1/2- to 2-hour court lunch breaks gave him time to tend to the remodeling of his Manhattan Beach home.

“I was able to get bids on the work and do other things I would never have gotten done (otherwise),” he said.

Brock said: “It was like having a year’s vacation.”

According to some jurors, the year in court actually added up to only about six months, counting full or partial days when the case wasn’t heard because Judge Frank Baffa was discussing legal technicalities with the lawyers or because jurors’ personal business, such as doctor’s appointments, took priority. A lengthy summer recess sent jurors back to their jobs for a few weeks.

“There were a lot of down times, hours a day for us to just sit and wait for the trial to begin,” said Loretta Fortunato, 35, of Redondo Beach, also a letter carrier. “I brought in reading material, and I played chess every day with the same guy for four months. I went Christmas shopping with the ladies a few times.”

Richard Rorick, 46, of Bellflower, a motor vehicle dispatcher with the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, said he thought about asking to be excused from the jury after his 40-year-old wife, Alice, developed cancer and died two months later, on Aug. 29.

“I was going through a real depression, and I wasn’t handling it too well,” Rorick said, recalling a day when he started hyperventilating in court and paramedics were called. “I thought it was a heart attack, but I put it on the wavelength of negative thinking.”

Rorick said he talked to his wife about leaving the jury. “But the more we talked, the more she convinced me I’d been with it so long, maybe it would be best for me to follow through and complete it,” he said. “She was eager for me to finish it.”

Fellow jurors were supportive, Rorick said, and the jury turned out to be the best place for him to be during his tough time. “We were a little family,” he said.

The jury was top-heavy with aerospace, airline and government workers because their employers allow unlimited jury service at full pay.

Arrasmith, a customer relations trouble-shooter for United Airlines, said this is good for the court system in the event of long trials. “If you didn’t have it,” he said, “you’d narrow down the group you could pick from to retired people, basically.”

Initially, there were 18 people--12 jurors and six alternates--but the group lost four jurors during the trial for reasons ranging from conflict of interest (a juror discovered that he knew a client of one of the attorneys) to career concerns (a juror decided that he was missing too many promotions by being away from his job).

Jurors say that while personalities sometimes grated and tempers ignited, people generally got along and stuck to the rules against reaching conclusions before the evidence was in or discussing the case among themselves or with other people.

“When there were slips, and someone would start to say something, always (someone else) would say they shouldn’t say anything about that,” Arrasmith recalled.

When it finally came time to deliberate, he said, jurors were elated: “You could finally say how you felt about something . . . ‘That guy was full of it,’ or ‘I really liked that person.’ ”

Brock said she formed a couple of good friendships. “I go shopping with one girlfriend and go over to her house,” she said. “We hit it off.”

Of the personality differences, Arrasmith said: “When you’re around each other that long, you tend to take liberties because you think you know someone well enough and then find that you don’t. People would be in a conversation, someone else would comment on it, and the other person would say, ‘I’m not speaking to you.’ ”

What did they talk about?

“Religion, politics, restaurants, car types, everybody’s job, families, how to raise children, how not to raise children, what the attorneys looked like and whether they were well dressed or not well dressed,” Arrasmith recalled.

‘Attitude Problem’

Rorick said one juror with “an attitude problem” was hard for him to get along with: “When what you had to say was opposite what she thought, she’d put her two cents in and say, ‘I don’t want to hear this stuff.’ ”

The attorneys left vivid impressions on Brock. One, she said, was “so blundering”--dropping things and putting exhibits upside down on easels--that she felt sorry for him. Another “was like a spoiled brat” who “made snide remarks, shook his head and looked disgusted” when things weren’t going his way.”

Jurors said that despite the complexity and technical nature of the case--which was dominated by the testimony of geologists, engineers and experts on soils and water--it was not hard to follow. They said they reached their decision simply because attorneys for the property owners presented the more persuasive case.

What prolonged the trial, they said, were fine points such as deciding how much liability to assign to each of the five government entities or businesses that they found liable for the slide.

The jury decided that owners or former owners of 30 properties in the slide area should share $18.2 million.

Fortunato said she studied geology in college but learned more during the trial than she ever did in the classroom.

Brock said she deserves a college degree in the subject after her jury work, adding that it helped her when she bought a hillside house during the trial.