Where Focus Groups Hold Court

The 5-year-old was gravely injured in a botched delivery, and his parents were suing.

The lawsuit said the boy's cerebral palsy was caused by a lack of oxygen during birth. Hospital nurses ignored warning signs during his mother's labor, the suit said, despite knowing hers was a high-risk pregnancy. Twelve hours into labor, her uterus ruptured. Her doctor, who wasn't there during labor, arrived after the mother had been prepped for an emergency Caesarean delivery.

A father of three voiced the group's consensus after listening to an hour of argument. "They should have had a doctor there," he said.

Chris St. Hilaire, a jury consultant from Orange County, listened intently from the darkened side of a one-way mirror spanning the length of the conference room. He leaned toward Michael Prangle, the Chicago attorney, who, in August, will be defending the Las Vegas hospital named in the parents' lawsuit.

"Now the question is," he said of the jury's sympathy for the parents, "can we get them back?"

In the next hour, the dozen mulled the best arguments in the hospital's defense -- that the labor was routine until the mother's uterus ruptured, prompting the baby's quick delivery.

The final vote: 10 to 2 in favor of the defense. The young father who initially leaned toward the parents summed up his shifting support for the medical staff: "They really did everything they could."

With that, the pretend jurors went home, each with $75 in his pocket. And Prangle would receive a written report on the sessions, including detailed analyses of what worked and why, so he could better prepare for the coming trial.

Most court watchers know about jury consultants, the people brought in to help defense attorneys and prosecutors pick jurors most likely to be sympa- thetic to their side. Attorneys also hold mock trials, where they rehearse their case in front of a faux jury or prepare witnesses for going to court.

St. Hilaire's Costa Mesa company, Jury Impact, has adopted another strategy in trial preparation, by gathering the kinds of focus groups used by marketing experts to test new products and political messages. So far, the company's work has involved only civil cases.