… yet courts nationwide expect – no, demand – that jurors “work” for nothing, for a pittance that won’t begin to cover the cost of gasoline to drive to the courthouse. They demand people clear their calendar and be at their beck and call for weeks, letting potential jurors know after 3:30 each afternoon if they need to come in the next day.
As a small, self-employed businessperson, the court expects me to keep my schedule clear so I’m available and I’m not needed, to be able to schedule 8 hours of appointments for “tomorrow” after 4 PM “today”.
The attorneys arguing cases before the jury don’t run their business by waiting until 3:30 PM to set up appointments for the next day, yet that is exactly what they expect business people to do.
How can any businessperson work like this and expect to make enough money to live on? Short answer: They can’t.
I won’t be able to schedule appointments in advance and will have to rely on last minute appointments for income during the month of August. I have a couple of clients who will love that, but most of my clients like to plan ahead and set aside time a few days in advance. Unfortunately, the last minute clients won’t begin to make up for income lost because I can’t schedule appointments in advance.
As a result, being on a jury will cost me in excess of $3000 in lost gross income (while increasing my expenses). And that is assuming I’m not banned from using the Internet if I’m made to serve on a jury in a case that lasts longer than a few hours. It’s kind of hard to run an Internet-based consulting business if you can’t use the Internet, and the loss of Internet access would cost me several hundred more.
While many employers pay their employees regular wages when called to jury duty, self-employed small business people have no one to pay them for lost wages.
No work equals no pay.
Some employers make the employee use vacation and sick days, but again, the self-employed don’t have this luxury.
No work equals no pay.
Bank of America expects my mortgage payment on time and in full, they don’t care that my income can be close to 0 for the entire month because I need to be always available for jury duty. They want paid and if they aren’t, they won’t hesitate to foreclose.
Heck, even the county that is calling me to serve on the jury expects me to pay my property taxes, on time and in full (at the rate of $12 a day, more than pittance given to jurors). They won’t care that I have no money because of involuntary, forced servitude to the court system.
Society gets the justice system they are willing to pay for, and unfortunately, no one is willing to pay for true juries of their peers and I can’t afford to carry the cost of serving on my own.