The Volokh Conspiracy - Attorney's Girlfriend on the Jury:

This is almost unbelievable: in a case in which a jury awarded $28 million to a plaintiff in a rollover case, "The trial was interrupted last week when Ford lawyers discovered one of the jurors, Diana Palacios, was the girlfriend of plaintiffs' lawyer Jesse Gamez. In a hearing over a defense request for a mistrial, evidence was presented that Palacios, the Crystal City city manager, had also solicited two of the plaintiffs for Gamez to represent."

Now here's the even crazier part: the judge refused to grant a mistrial. And wouldn't there be some professional, or just plain moral, obligation on the part of the attorney to let the judge know that his girlfriend was on the jury before the trial started?

UPDATE: A reader writes:

You'd think so. But maybe not, at least with respect to a professional obligation. See Armstrong v. State, 897 S.W.2d 361 (Tex. Cr. App. 1995), where a juror was the ~~longtime girlfriend~~ [correction: another reader points out, correctly, that the juror was actually a longtime female friend] of one of the prosecutors, and the defendant was convicted of murder and given a life sentence. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, en banc, upheld the conviction. (No doubt this influenced the judge's decision in the Ford case you reported on.) Further, the Court expressed "no opinion" about whether the prosecutor violated Tex. Disciplinary Rule of Professional Conduct 3.09, which is a special rule for prosecutors. No one even seems to have *suggested* that there was a more general duty for attorneys other than prosecutors to disclose such matters. The Court's attitude seems to have been that defense counsel should've done a better job questioning the jurors during voire dire.

On the other hand, another reader notes that it's a pretty clear violation of rules of professional conduct to have a third party solicit clients.

	[David Bernstein, March 6, 2005 at 12:14am] Trackbacks Attorney's Girlfriend on the Jury: This is almost unbelievable: in a case in which a jury awarded $28 million to a plaintiff in a rollover case, "The trial was interrupted last week when Ford lawyers discovered one of the jurors, Diana Palacios, was the girlfriend of plaintiffs' lawyer Jesse Gamez. In a hearing over a defense request for a mistrial, evidence was presented that Palacios, the Crystal City city manager, had also solicited two of the plaintiffs for Gamez to represent." Now here's the even crazier part: the judge refused to grant a mistrial. And wouldn't there be some professional, or just plain moral, obligation on the part of the attorney to let the judge know that his girlfriend was on the jury before the trial started? UPDATE: A reader writes: You'd think so. But maybe not, at least with respect to a professional obligation. See Armstrong v. State, 897 S.W.2d 361 (Tex. Cr. App. 1995), where a juror was the ~~longtime girlfriend~~ [correction: another reader points out, correctly, that the juror was actually a longtime female friend] of one of the prosecutors, and the defendant was convicted of murder and given a life sentence. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, en banc, upheld the conviction. (No doubt this influenced the judge's decision in the Ford case you reported on.) Further, the Court expressed "no opinion" about whether the prosecutor violated Tex. Disciplinary Rule of Professional Conduct 3.09, which is a special rule for prosecutors. No one even seems to have suggested that there was a more general duty for attorneys other than prosecutors to disclose such matters. The Court's attitude seems to have been that defense counsel should've done a better job questioning the jurors during voire dire. On the other hand, another reader notes that it's a pretty clear violation of rules of professional conduct to have a third party solicit clients.