The Runaway Jury

By John Grisham

I read this book hot on the heels of my first John Grisham novel, The Broker (which I didn’t review, but it’s great).

Let me ask you a hypothetical question.  Let’s say you made a product, let’s call it Product A, and it was a big hit.  Sales from it made you wealthy.  Eventually you branched out and started selling other products, Products B – Z.  They all sold well, and they were consumables (that is people buy, use them up, then have to buy more), so you had a fairly steady revenue stream.  But Product A still sold more than any other single product in your line.  Then you find out that Product A is dangerous and, in fact, is killing people, but the rest of your product lines are harmless, and are in fact, beneficial.  Would you:

     a) Stop selling Product A and sally forth with the rest of your product lines?

     b) Everything in (a) above and attempt to make reasonable restitution for past customers of Product A?

     c) Lie to your customers, tell them Product A is really harmless, and keep milking it for more sales?

If you chose (a), you’re reasonable.  If you chose (b), you’re a saint.  If you chose (c), you’re evil… and this is exactly what the tobacco industry did!  They know their product kills—if you use it exactly as it’s intended—and they continue to sell it, and tell people it’s harmless!

The Runaway Jury is a fictional account of a suit against the tobacco industry, a tort case of a widow suing the manufacturer of the brand of cigarettes her late husband smoked.  Whatever you think of such suits, this book is a good read.  Grisham is a skilled enough writer to not take sides on the case.  On one hand he makes the tobacco industry look evil, through the eyes of the plaintiff.  And just a few paragraphs later, he makes them sound faultless.  I found myself cheering for different sides throughout the course of the book (and I’m not a smoker).

The case centers on one of the jurors in the case, Nicolas Easter.  While preparing for this case, neither the plaintiff nor the defendant can find out much information about him.  He lied about his background and his name is most likely an alias.  But from what they observed of his behavior, he possesses traits that both sides see as desirable in a juror.

Later, someone surfaces who claims they can fix the verdict, and they provide evidence that they have inside access to the jury.  The defense tries desperately to find out who she really is and where she came from.  Since we as readers have little more information that the defense, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.  I was really rooting for her and whoever she was working with, but which side she was on was obscure.  I didn’t know until the very end whose side she was really on.

This book kept my interest, but things really picked up near the end and at that point, it became a real page-turner.  The whole book is good, but block out some time to read when you get about 4/5 of the way through.

Another great legal thriller from Grisham.  I hope to read many more just like it.

External links

• The Runaway Jury on Wikipedia