No-fault dispute over attendant care benefits; Motion to excuse a juror for cause under MCR 2.511(D); Poet v. Traverse City Osteopathic Hosp.; Jalaba v. Borovoy; Presumption jurors are qualified; Bynum v. ESAB Group, Inc.; “Actionable prejudice”; Jury nullification; Failure to assert that the verdict was against the great weight of the evidence; Precopio v. City of Detroit Dep’t of Transp.; Tuttle v. Department of State Hwys.; Failure to argue that the jury’s special verdicts were so logically & legally inconsistent that they could not be reconciled & must be set aside; Local Emergency Fin. Assistance Loan Bd. v. Blackwell

In this dispute over no-fault attendant care benefits, the court held that plaintiff was not entitled to relief on his claim that the trial court abused its discretion by denying his motion to excuse a juror (#166) for cause under MCR 2.511(D) because he could not show actionable prejudice requiring reversal under Poet. It also rejected his jury nullification claim. It assumed without deciding that the trial court abused its discretion, but concluded that plaintiff was not entitled to relief because he did not meet the third and fourth elements of the Poet test. As to the third element – the moving party showed “the desire to excuse another subsequently summoned juror—the moving party is required to manifest such desire by way of ‘a motion to challenge for cause, a request for additional peremptory challenges in the case of exhaustion, or a simple expression of dissatisfaction with a juror who cannot be excused because of improperly compelled exhaustion.’” The court noted that after the trial court denied his “motion to excuse Juror #166, plaintiff did move to excuse another juror for cause. But the trial court granted that motion, excusing the objected-to juror, which plainly resulted in no actionable prejudice to plaintiff.” Further, he did not challenge any additional “jurors for cause, request additional peremptory challenges, or express dissatisfaction with any juror who could not be excused because” he did not have any more peremptory challenges. Thus, he did not satisfy the third element. In addition, he failed to “satisfy the fourth element, i.e., the juror whom the party later wished to excuse was objectionable.” In order to demonstrate “that a potential juror is objectionable, there must, first, be a specific indication, on the record, that the party seeking removal finds the individual objectionable. Second, the objector must expressly articulate or list the particular reasons why the juror is objectionable.” When the trial court denied his motion as to Juror #166, plaintiff did not articulate any “specific objections to any juror other than the one he successfully challenged for cause.” And while he later used his peremptory challenges on several jurors, he did not articulate any “particular reasons for doing so. In sum, because plaintiff did not expressly articulate any objections to a subsequently summoned juror who ended up on the final panel, he did not satisfy the fourth element of the Poet test.” Affirmed.