CARDINAL HEALTH INC. v. JOSEPH POPPELL (And Vice Versa)

Twenty-one people from the Glynn County area, all relatives of individual drug abusers, sued several wholesale drug distributors, claiming the companies illegally shipped controlled substances to pharmacies filling invalid prescriptions, fueling addictions that caused the relatives emotional harm. After a five-week trial, a jury found the distributors not liable. The relatives asked for a new trial, arguing that one juror lied during jury selection about knowing people affected by drug abuse and that he shared outside information during deliberations that unfairly favored the distributors. They also argued the judge should have told the jury it could infer the distributors knew about wrongdoing even if they deliberately avoided finding out. The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed the verdict. It found the trial judge was allowed to believe the juror's testimony denying dishonesty and denying he shared outside information, and that any instructional error about deliberate ignorance was harmless because the relatives were still allowed to argue that theory to the jury. Because the distributors won, the court did not need to address their cross-appeal about the drug liability law's constitutionality.

The trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying a new trial because it was entitled to credit the juror's live testimony denying dishonesty and denying he introduced outside information during deliberations, and any error in refusing the willful-blindness jury instruction was harmless because the jury was otherwise properly instructed and the plaintiffs were allowed to argue that theory to the jury.

The ruling reinforces that Georgia trial judges have wide latitude to resolve juror-misconduct claims by crediting a juror's own denials over secondhand accounts, making such challenges harder to win. It also signals that in civil suits under Georgia's Drug Dealer Liability Act, jury instructions on subtle knowledge theories like willful blindness may not be essential if lawyers can still argue the theory to jurors.

Judgment affirmed; cross-appeal dismissed as moot

1. Georgia's evidence rule on juror testimony (OCGA § 24-6-606(b)) bars jurors from testifying about their own mental processes during deliberations but allows testimony about whether extraneous prejudicial information reached the jury, so the court excluded statements about the juror's private motives and considered only the alleged outside information.
2. Because the trial court did not make explicit findings, the Supreme Court of Georgia presumed the judge implicitly resolved factual disputes in favor of denying a new trial, a presumption courts apply when a lower court is not required to explain its reasoning.
3. The trial judge was entitled to believe the accused juror's live testimony denying he knew the drug abuser or shared outside information, over a secondhand affidavit from the jury foreperson, since resolving conflicting witness credibility is the trial judge's job, not the appellate court's.
4. On the claim that the juror lied during jury selection, the relatives needed to show both that he answered a question dishonestly and that a truthful answer would have justified excusing him for cause; the court found the evidence, including a divorce-proceeding allegation and evidence he knew people with drug problems, did not prove dishonesty given his sworn denials.
5. The trial court's decision to question the juror itself rather than allow full cross-examination by the lawyers was within its discretion to control how evidence is presented and to protect jurors from harassment, so no further hearing was required.
6. Even if refusing to instruct the jury on willful blindness (the idea that deliberately avoiding knowledge can count as knowledge) was error, it was harmless under Georgia's harmless-error statute because the jury was otherwise told it could infer knowledge from circumstantial evidence, and the relatives were allowed to argue the willful-blindness theory directly to the jury in closing.

• opioid litigation
• juror misconduct
• Drug Dealer Liability Act
• new trial motion
• willful blindness instruction