The federal judge presiding over developer Larry Silverstein’s multibillion dollar Twin Towers insurance trial told lawyers yesterday that a juror wants to drop out in the middle of deliberations – raising the specter of another high-profile case roiled by jury jitters.
“We have a problem,” Judge Michael Mukasey told lawyers in his Manhattan courtroom. “One of the jurors has made it known to my deputy clerk that she wants out.”
Lawyers for Silverstein – the WTC leaseholder – and for his insurers talked with the judge about the possibility of removing the juror from the panel or of accepting a majority verdict rather than a unanimous one, a move common in civil cases.
Mukasey downplayed the incident.
“We haven’t gotten any formal communication and I don’t propose to do anything based on something that was uttered sotto voce to my deputy clerk,” he said.
The jurors have been deliberating for six days, trying to decide whether the insurers had signed on to a policy form that would limit the 9/11 settlement to a one-time payout of about $3.5 billion.
Mukasey did not identify which one of the five women on the 11-member jury made the comment – but the incident immediately brought to mind the recent mistrial in the corporate looting case of ex-Tyco boss Dennis Kozlowski, which was thrown into turmoil after a holdout juror clashed with other panel members.