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No Good Deed...
Nov. 18th, 2008 05:32 pmTwo pieces of mail were delivered to my new box today. One was from Springfield. It contained a summons for jury service.
WTF? I just served.
Oh. These are the feds, not the state. "If you served the one day/one trial in any state court, it does not excuse you from the Federal Court."
Okay, understood, but it gets worse. Significantly worse. Federal Court is an 8-week, on call system. It means not knowing until the Friday before service starts when one needs to report. From what I can tell, it's then a matter of calling in weekly and going over to Springfield whenever I'm required to. Two months of uncertainty is going to make it awfully damned hard to commit to project delivery dates with clients.
They say vacations, medical and business appointments are allowed during the term of jury service if the Clerk's office is notified in advance, but I plan to be out of state when jury service starts and I can only find out if a deferral is accepted 10 days prior...which is after my trip will have started. Add to that the uncertainties of winter weather and travel. Not good.
The eight weeks cover what is traditionally one of the busy periods for my business. A third or more of my gross annual income traditionally comes from work done during those eight weeks. It's not a good time to add a large dose of uncertainty into my life. I'm already dealing with more uncertainty than I would prefer thanks to some upcoming medical tests. Oh, the joy.
Unlike the civilized Massachusetts system, there isn't an automatic deferral option to reschedule jury service once. Oh, yeah, and no cell phones allowed in the Federal Courthouse. No computers or other electronics, either. Heck, they don't even allow beverages to be brought in.
All in all, this sucks. I take the importance and need for jury duty seriously, but this is whiplash, coming as it does as a complete surprise...and a harsh one at that compared to the totally reasonable, easy to deal with Massachusetts system.
I'm going to take them at their word on vacations, medical appointments, and business appointments scheduled before the summons arrived and notify them of all of them that are already on my calendar. Ghu knows what I'll do about the ones that aren't. I'm also going to apply for a deferral. From what I can tell from the information provided, there are times when Federal jury service would not constitute an hardship to my business and life. Well, the two months of uncertainty will always be a hardship in terms of clients and project scheduling, but there are times that it's likely to be problematic but manageable. In January and February, it looks potentially incapacitating. March, too.
Here's hoping they're willing to reschedule me for the spring. And that they manage to tell me before December 26th that I don't have to appear in court on Monday, January 5th.
Arrrgh. Did they really have to come up with this kind of punishment to counterbalance the overall ease of my first experience with jury duty, the one that took place just 18 days ago?
WTF? I just served.
Oh. These are the feds, not the state. "If you served the one day/one trial in any state court, it does not excuse you from the Federal Court."
Okay, understood, but it gets worse. Significantly worse. Federal Court is an 8-week, on call system. It means not knowing until the Friday before service starts when one needs to report. From what I can tell, it's then a matter of calling in weekly and going over to Springfield whenever I'm required to. Two months of uncertainty is going to make it awfully damned hard to commit to project delivery dates with clients.
They say vacations, medical and business appointments are allowed during the term of jury service if the Clerk's office is notified in advance, but I plan to be out of state when jury service starts and I can only find out if a deferral is accepted 10 days prior...which is after my trip will have started. Add to that the uncertainties of winter weather and travel. Not good.
The eight weeks cover what is traditionally one of the busy periods for my business. A third or more of my gross annual income traditionally comes from work done during those eight weeks. It's not a good time to add a large dose of uncertainty into my life. I'm already dealing with more uncertainty than I would prefer thanks to some upcoming medical tests. Oh, the joy.
Unlike the civilized Massachusetts system, there isn't an automatic deferral option to reschedule jury service once. Oh, yeah, and no cell phones allowed in the Federal Courthouse. No computers or other electronics, either. Heck, they don't even allow beverages to be brought in.
All in all, this sucks. I take the importance and need for jury duty seriously, but this is whiplash, coming as it does as a complete surprise...and a harsh one at that compared to the totally reasonable, easy to deal with Massachusetts system.
I'm going to take them at their word on vacations, medical appointments, and business appointments scheduled before the summons arrived and notify them of all of them that are already on my calendar. Ghu knows what I'll do about the ones that aren't. I'm also going to apply for a deferral. From what I can tell from the information provided, there are times when Federal jury service would not constitute an hardship to my business and life. Well, the two months of uncertainty will always be a hardship in terms of clients and project scheduling, but there are times that it's likely to be problematic but manageable. In January and February, it looks potentially incapacitating. March, too.
Here's hoping they're willing to reschedule me for the spring. And that they manage to tell me before December 26th that I don't have to appear in court on Monday, January 5th.
Arrrgh. Did they really have to come up with this kind of punishment to counterbalance the overall ease of my first experience with jury duty, the one that took place just 18 days ago?
