Even though a jury foreman’s notes of his recollections of trial testimony could very well have prejudiced a plaintiff in a malpractice case, she will not get a new trial based on Pennsylvania’s “no impeachment rule.”
The state Supreme Court has said that jury note-taking in civil cases “generally is forbidden.” But the foreman’s notes were untouchable, because the no impeachment rule only allows jurors to talk about what happened during deliberations if their decision could have been affected by an outside influence.
