Jury Duty Questions

[karisbell]

We are getting more and nervous that my DH may be chosen as a juror on a trial that he has been told will last at least 15 days. Normally he would enjoy the opportunity to do this civic duty, but his abscence will cause a significant hardship to his company. They will lose at least 25% of their billable income for the time he misses. His company is a service provider with some major contracts pending at his primary client. Face time is critical right now. He has told all of this to the judge, with no sign that he will be released. Any advice??

 

[Pam]

Have your DH's employer type a letter to the Judge on the company letterhead. State in the text of the letter how your DH's absence from the company will have adverse effects on everyone. Give examples of the amount of income that will be loss, that there is no one to cover for your husband.

Document everything.

 

[karisbell]

He did all of that as soon as he got the letter. No one seems to care so far! He is Asian and therefore a minority. There have been some motions put forth by the prosecution that there are too many whites on the jury. I am not sure if his prescence on the jury would make a difference with that or not. We were thinking that it might be a factor in increasing his odds.

 

[Lyn5]

In my limited experience, it seemed like there was no sympaty for loss of income or for hardships in finding someone else to watch your children if you were a SAHM. I hope it works out for you.

 

[Feralpeg]

One of my former employees was selected for jury duty during the middle of a large conversion of a new client to our system. She played a very important role in the conversion process. I sent a letter with her to give to the judge stating that it could cause a problem with the conversion and possibly the loss of a major client. He didn't care. She served on a jury for two weeks in the middle of our conversion process. What a nightmare.

 

[karisbell]

Thanks for the sympathy. I guess there is nothing we can really do about it but wait and see. It doesn't help that he works for a German company and they don't really understand how our system works.

 

[aprilgail2]

personally I would just ignore the summons and wait for them to send another and then the timing might be better. I have been doing that for 22 years now and in the end it always works out. At first I was goign to change my life around to serve when they called but then when they sent me a questionaire asking the best times for me to serve I put in May-Sept as I worked for a company whos busy seasons were Halloween, Christmas, valentines and Easter...yet every single time they sent me a summons it was for Christmas time or easter...why bother asking me when is good for me if you are going to call me whenever your damn well please?? So now I just put them off until i am good and ready to go.

 

[Microcell]

Maybe he won't get chosen if he displays extreme views of things. Let em fry, my mom was kidnapped so anyone who would do that needs to fry... etc...

 

[golfgal]

personally I would just ignore the summpons adn wait for them to send another and then the timing might be better. I have been doing that for 22 years now and in the end it always works out. At first I was goign to change my life around to serve when they called but then when they sent me a questionaire asking the best times for me to serve I put in May-Sept as I worked for a company whos busy seasons were Halloween, Christmas, valentines and Easter...yet every single time they sent me a summons it was for Christmas time or easter...why bother asking me when is good for me if you are going to call me whenever your damn well please?? So now I just put them off until i am good and ready to go.

That doesn't work every where. Every state and every county in every state calls up potential jurors differently and expects different things out of them. In our county you are "on call" for 3 months. You have to "report" in every Friday to see if your number is scheduled to come in the following week (you call a hotline number). If you don't report in by a certain time, a sheriff will be at your door bright and early Monday morning to take you in. When you first get called in they have you fill out a form stating if you have pre-planned vacations, work trips/commitments, etc. They do try to work around those as much as possible.

If the lawyers have an idea of what types of people they want on a case then good luck getting dismissed. One friend was on a case where a man was let go by a company and was suing them for breach of contract. He was a pretty high powered computer guy and had a lot of perks in his contract. Well, the lawyer for the company wanted a lot of blue collar workers on the jury because his perks were something they weren't going to be familiar with. My friend is an LPN but her dad was a Dr and she knew enough about the corporate world to know that paying for moving expenses, getting a couple months salary to pay for other related moving costs, etc were not out of line. He lost because most of the people on the jury didn't understand that.

 

[karisbell]

He was able to get out of his first summons a couple of months ago because he was out of the country for 3 weeks. I think he was hoping that would be it! His conscience won't allow him to answer any of the questions less than honestly, but he has kept an eye out for those that might raise and eyebrow!

 

[LoraJ]

Are there ways that he can do his job while serving?

When I was on a jury, we usually got out around 4 or 3pm. A co-worker of mine just had to serve Grand Jury duty for 2 months every Tuesday & Thursday. She would catch up with her work emails when she got home and make calls during the lunch break.

 

[karisbell]

He can do a little, but he has to be on site when the client is there which is 6AM - 3PM with approx one hour commute each way. Thanks for the suggestion! I am sure he will get really creative if he has to do this for 3 weeks!

 

[karisbell]

DH got cut from the pool at the last minute!!! Thanks to all who helped me worry through this one!!! They were down to the last 30 or so and he got cut at the last minute.