My Civic Duty

Well, between work and our other project (I'll explain later), it's been really busy for us lately. Hence the lack of posts on the blog. I promise we'll get back to some consistency soon. So with that said, when I got a jury summons in the mail a few weeks back, I sort of looked at it like an inconvenience with my schedule. Too much going on already, now I have to spend a few h0urs down at the Fort Bend County Courthouse (Tues 5/6). I moved some meeting schedues around for that Tuesday, but it never occurred to me that I could actually get chosen to serve on a jury. It seems like most people I know get called down and then released.

So I show up that morning to a room full of over 500 people...including former Rocket great Moses Malone. After some words from a judge and a short video, they then call about 50 people, including mysef at #13. They walk us over to the courthouse, take us into the courtroom, and prepare us for questioning from the attorneys. I had never gotten this far in the process, so it was all new to me. Basically they ask some questions, the lawyers make their "strikes" of who they do not want, then take the first 12 remaining to make up the jury for the case. As #13 in the line of 50, I realized that my chances of getting selected were pretty high....and that's exactly how it played out. The judge explains the process and a brief description of the case and tells us it will probably last 4 days!!! So their went the rest of my week.

While highly inconvenient, the case and the experience turned out to be pretty interesting. In a nutshell, the Missouri City Little League was hosting their annual fund raiser gala at the Quail Valley Country Club (very close to Sienna actually) back in May of 2003. It's an adult only event which includes dinner, drinks, silent auction, etc... In addition, they always have a theme to the party, and this year it happened to be Urban Cowboy. Of course, you can't have an Urban Cowboy theme without a mechanical bull right? So they hired Bull Power, Inc from Dallas to come down and operate a bull for the party. About 5 hours in, a man rides the bull, gets thrown off, and the bull comes down (or spun back around), and hit the guy it the head. This causes his neck to bend downward and left him paralyzed on the mat. After 4 days without much movement, he did have surgery and eventually regained movement in all parts of his body. This was a civil suit in which the man that was injured was suing the Bull Power, Inc company as well as the Quail Valley Country Club for a total of $1.7 million. The reason the club was included in the suit is because people allegedly saw the bull operator drinking beer, which was being supplied by the club.

I'll save you all the details of the testimony and drastic differences that we heard from each side throughout the 4 day trial. In the end, there just wasn't enough evidence to hold anyone accountable for what happened that night. Basically, we decided it was an unfortunate accident that occurred. Like I mentioned, it was inconvenient, but I actually enjoyed the experience and seeing the justice system in action.