I found a check for $12 from 2006 that I didn’t cash. It was from the clerk of Johnston Co. for jury duty. I didn’t actually get to sit on the jury. When you are called for jury duty, you start off in what’s known as a jury panel, a bunch of people. Then you are called up and questioned by the lawyers. They can each each throw a set number of people off the jury for no reason. This was a personal injury case, and the plaintiff had sued someone for doing something that allegedly caused his injury, known as tortious conduct. Say some company commits a “tort,” an action that wrongfully caused someone harm. Like if the grocery store isn’t careful and there’s a bunch of grapes on the floor, and you slip and fall and hurt yourself. The plaintiff’s lawyer asked me what I did for a living, and I said I was a newspaper editor in Raleigh, which got his interest and also perked up the judge. The lawyer asked me what my views were on tort reform, I kid you not. At the time, tort reform was big because business interests wanted to limit the damages that could be won by plaintiffs in lawsuits. So from their perspective, this was “reform.” From the standpoint of personal injury lawyers, this was just a way for bad companies to injure people without having to pay a lot of money in lawsuits. I said, truthfully, that I could see both sides of the issue, and that I understood that a lot of lawsuits against businesses would tend to make a state’s legal climate less business-friendly. I got tossed off the jury in about two seconds. But I got $12. I decided to save the check as a souvenir and it was stuck in a drawer. My wife was cleaning out some drawers last week, found it, and she asked do you want this, and I said, yes, it is an authentic, mint-condition Will Crocker check from his tenure as clerk of JoCo superior court. It will go to the Clayton town archives with the rest of my stuff someday. Or best offer.
