I was appointed to the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County, Maryland in 1982. I was very fortunate to have several very experienced judges to help me in handling cases. The Circuit Court had a very unique settlement conference process which was years ahead of the times. Every civil case was scheduled for a settlement conference before a judge. Only judges who volunteered participated in the settlement conferences  – about 5 out of 13 judges. This required a tremendous amount of work by the volunteer judges. Every morning each judge would handle 5-7 cases before handling their assigned trial docket. Each conference involved each party telling the judge why they thought a jury would rule their way.After several years it became obvious to me that what the parties were predicting was not actually happening. But there was no historical record of what occurred in the court room. When a case was concluded the only record was the judgement . There was no record of what type of case was tried , how much the medical expenses were and many other necessary information. I thought that all of the information would be helpful to the parties in my settlement conferences so I started tracking each case recording much of the information. As I accumulated information I would distribute the information to the parties at each settlement conference and basically say to both sides -“show me a case where a jury did what your are contending.” Since the Late 1980’s I have tracked all of the jury verdicts in Prince George’s County. Then Beginning in 2010 I began tracking verdicts in Ann Arundel County.
