Paralegal's Facebook Research Aids in Dismissal of Juror

Ohio paralegal Theresa "Tracy" Combs' Facebook research helped remove a member of the jury pool from consideration to sit on the jury for a Hamilton County Common Pleas Court trial this week. Ms. Combs is employed by Waite, Schneider, Bayless and Chesley, a Cincinnati civil litigation firm, which represents the plaintiff.

On Tuesday, potential juror Barry Price wrote on his Facebook profile that “Barry Price is sitting in hell … aka jury duty.”

In one of the affidavits [attorney Stan] Chesley submitted to the judge, on the issue, Chesley paralegal Theresa “Tracy” Combs wrote that Price’s Facebook page was one of 238,000 that belong to the “Cincinnati, Ohio” network on Facebook. Price had his Facebook page set up so it could be viewed by others in that Cincinnati network as well as those in Procter & Gamble and Purdue University networks on Facebook.

After Mr. Price's dismissal from the jury pool, the defendants tried to have the case declared a mistrial but Common Pleas Judge William Mallory denied the request.

See Cincinnati.com.

Internet networking sites, including MySpace, Facebook and Twitter can provide a mother lode of potential juror information to professional jury consultants and thorough paralegals like Ms. Combs.

Ms. Combs' public LinkedIn profile may be viewed at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/8/991/722.