Should I Ever Agree To the Waiver Of A Jury Trial ?
In general, you should not. The importance of a jury trial is that a jury tends to be a great equalizer between the little guy and large businesses. As such, most large businesses would prefer not to have their cases tried in front of a jury.
In general, you do not want to give up your right to a jury trial in contracts that you sign because it does tend to take away some leverage that you may have in terms of negotiating with the other party if you get into a dispute with that party.
Jury trial waivers in some jurisdictions are looked at closely as to their validity. If the jury trial waiver language is hidden in the small print of a contract then the validity of such a provision may be subject to challenge.
See Brien Roches book Law 101 published by Sphinx Publishing for more information on this subject.
