I was on a civil trial jury for a very similar situation. Construction worker 30 years ago, exposed to asbestos, lung cancer. Oh, and also a lifelong smoker. Or

I was on a civil trial jury for a very similar situation. Construction worker 30 years ago, exposed to asbestos, lung cancer. Oh, and also a lifelong smoker. Originally sued ~30 companies, whittled down to 3 by the time the trial started, 1 by the time the trial ended, a company that mined asbestos. The striking thing was the degree to which the other jurors seemed to be making decisions based almost completely on emotion and which side told a better and more sympathetic story, with little regard for facts or reason. One of the jurors at one point gave a blatantly incorrect explanation of a simple statement about probabilities, and got angry when I corrected her. The jury ended up awarding a pretty significant amount of money, because the plaintiff was relatively poor and sympathetic, and because the company had acted somewhat shady with regard to knowledge about the dangers of asbestos and warning labels. That's despite the tenuous connection between the asbestos they mined and the asbestos that may have been in his lungs (there was no direct evidence of asbestos in his lungs), and the significant probability that the lung cancer was caused by his smoking and not asbestos at all. The scary part is that I felt like most of the jury was at least trying to do the right thing, using the cognitive tools that they had available to them (mainly empathy and reasoning like "they acted shady so they deserve to be fined"). If people didn't even try, it could have been much worse. As it is, though, I pretty much lost my faith in the jury system.