The civil jury must rank among the most controversial of America’s political and legal institutions. To paraphrase Kalvan and Zeisel’s ground-breaking work, the jury is a group of people, chosen at random, who are then entrusted with official decision-making powers, yet who make their decisions in secret and with little or no explanation. It is therefore not surprising that the jury has been the subject of both extravagant praise and harsh criticism (Kalven and Zeisel, 1966, pg. 66). Indeed, contemporary critics of the civil justice system decry a “litigation explosion” of “frivolous lawsuits” decided by incompetent, irrational and gullible jurors.1 Despite this heated rhetoric surrounding the jury, relatively little is known about how civil juries reach their verdicts.