Law Weighed Heavily on Side of MGM, Juror Says

As a juror in Marich vs. MGM Inc., I’d like to respond to Howard Rosenberg’s Aug. 3 column about the case (“A Hurtful Verdict for a Pained Family”), in which we ruled that Robert and Marietta Marich were not entitled to damages stemming from an episode of “LAPD: Life on the Beat” about the death of their son.

The article was very well written, and I agreed with Rosenberg’s opinions regarding personal privacy and how the media handle such a sensitive (or, as they see it, insensitive?) subject. Unfortunately, the article left me feeling as though the jury was to blame for the injustices the Mariches have experienced.

I think I can speak for everyone in that jury deliberation room when I say that we all felt that what happened to the Mariches was terrible and sad. For us to award damages to them, however, we had to agree on the following two items:

1) “Intentional intrusion” had to take place on the day the police officer called the Mariches to tell them of their son’s death while, unbeknownst to them, an “LAPD” crew was recording the event, on Oct. 20, 1996. “Intentional intrusion” could not take place after that date (for example, during the sound editing process, when their conversation could have been removed entirely, or even during the approval process--when we could have pointed the finger at who I happened to think was responsible: the upper management/producers, who at that point knew there was a “problem” with the episode and decided to run it anyway). This left us with the sound editor. We requested that his testimony be read to us again. It’s long ... more than two hours long. Eight of us felt that he recorded the Mariches’ conversation accidentally or by chance. Four felt he did it intentionally.

2) Even if we had agreed that the intrusion was intentional, we still had to agree that MGM and QRZ Media were partners, and that each company had complete control over the other. This was very difficult to prove. One was a producer. The other was the distributor. There was no signed contract between these two companies, or anything even close to that in the evidence book we were given. There was also no evidence that MGM had any knowledge that there was a problem with the episode before it was broadcast in March. No evidence.

The verdict form was over five pages long. We deliberated for almost seven days. I think Rosenberg was a bit hard on us. I thought about the Mariches every day during that trial. We tried as best as we could to follow the law. So that’s what we did. Maybe some of our laws need changing.

Andrea Johnson works in the department of physics and astronomy at UCLA. She lives in El Segundo.