Going Beyond the Correction

* Since a newspaper correction seldom erases the damage caused by the original error, I wanted the opportunity to make absolutely clear that neither I nor the Irvine Co. ever suggested we were “not too happy with the makeup of the (all-woman) jury” in our recent litigation with Lion Country Safari.

We never even raised the issue. The Times did.

It turns out that your Newswatch item (Nov. 9) was rewritten by a staff writer who did not interview me and, incorrectly, read another writer’s account of my interview with The Times, and casually (and wrongly) concluded that I “would have preferred some gender balance” on the jury. The reporter with whom I talked has confirmed that I did not make or imply the statements attributed to me, and I appreciate your effort to correct the record.

Neither I nor the Irvine Co. had any concern about the jury being all women. Indeed, the company had the right to disqualify jurors but did not exercise it because the company and I were satisfied with the ability of the jury that was impaneled to fairly deliberate and decide the case.

In fact, Lion Country’s lawyers used their rights to challenge prospective jurors to disqualify men from the jury in their apparent effort to seat an all-woman jury. I’ll leave it to others to conclude what this says about Lion Country’s views about gender equality and the jury system.

I personally believe that gender has nothing to do with a jury’s ability to fairly and impartially deliberate and decide a case.

Time and the appellate process will tell whether the evidence introduced by our company at trial vindicates our company’s actions, which I believe will happen. In the meantime, we believe that the jury did its best to understand a very complicated case spanning a sophisticated business relationship lasting over a quarter of a century and did so unaffected by its gender composition.

PETER ZEUGHAUSER

General Counsel

The Irvine Co.