A jury that handed up a $860,000 verdict in a supermarket slip-and-fall case last year was not unduly influenced by one of its members — a state senator who is also a lawyer — the New Jersey trial judge says.

Turning down a defense motion to overturn the award, Superior Court Judge W. Hunt Dumont ruled Tuesday that the panel’s foreman — Sen. Robert Martin, R-Morris — had not been the sage he portrayed himself to be in his memoir, “Observations on a Jersey Jury.”