SPOKANE — A judge has ordered a new trial in a medical malpractice case after complaints that several jurors referred to an attorney of Japanese descent as “Mr. Kamikaze” during deliberations.
Spokane County Superior Court Judge Robert Austin said the racial comments call into question whether juror misconduct was at play in a verdict that went against attorney Mark D. Kamitomo’s client, clearing a local doctor of negligence in a cancer diagnosis.
Austin said he was surprised when he received Kamitomo’s motion for a new trial last month.
“We’d hoped we’d moved beyond this, and we apparently have not. It’s upsetting,” Austin said, visibly emotional during Friday’s court hearing.
Two jurors approached Kamitomo after the Dec. 7 verdict, saying five other jurors mocked him during their closed-door proceedings, calling him names including “Mr. Kamikaze,” “Mr. Miyashi” and “Mr. Miyagi,” a character in the movie “The Karate Kid.”
One juror also said that because the verdict was going to be read on the anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the remarks made about Kamitomo were “almost appropriate,” according to one juror’s affidavit.
The jury’s “no negligence” finding cleared Dr. Nathan P. Stime, a Spokane physician, of malpractice charges. Stime’s attorney, Brian Rekofke, obtained affidavits from seven jurors as part of his motion opposing a new trial.
Those jurors didn’t deny the names were used, but they said they were used not as racial insults but because they had trouble pronouncing the names of both Rekofke and Kamitomo.
Austin called that implausible, noting that no juror affidavits reported any “bastardization” of Rekofke’s “Middle European” name.
“Frankly, I can’t conceive of people seriously undertaking their responsibility and using those kinds of nicknames when it’s one-sided,” Austin said.
Kamitomo said he was happy with Austin’s ruling. “The judge paid attention and did the right thing,” he told The Spokesman-Review after the hearing.
Kamitomo grew up in southern Alberta and graduated from Gonzaga Law School in 1989. His father, Doug Kamitomo, was 8 when his family was seized in Vancouver, B.C., and relocated to a Canadian internment camp after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor.
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