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I find the best way to aviod jury service is to keep a healthy criminal record topped up.
As a comparison, no one gives a ****. To the op live your life, take you chances and try to be a decent member of society and do the right thing the fact that your wife earns loads is great I expect so suck it up and get on with life.
Have you been drinking?
What are you on about?
Time to take your Sunday bath, cocoa and get tucked up. It's a school day tomorrow.
Have you been drinking?
What are you on about?
Time to take your Sunday bath, cocoa and get tucked up. It’s a school day tomorrow.
Yeah its clearly a sign of being drunk to think high earners should do their civic duty!
Nobody is saying they shouldn’t do their civic duty. The question is whether they should get full recompense for their loss of earnings
Yeah its clearly a sign of being drunk to think high earners should do their civic duty!
Who has said they shouldn't?
What do you class as a "high earner"?
What do you class as a “high earner”?
Anyone who earns more than me obviously.
On a serious note though anyone over 30k is doing ok compared to most
Others have already explained there is no magic way to get more money (unless she has insurance). However if it helps at all the court won’t start (the jury part) until 10am usually, will have a full hour for lunch and often aim to finish by 4. When my staff have jury duty we top up the allowance to their salary level on condition that they keep in touch / respond to email before/after court. Your wife may still be able to earn something by being available at those times.
The reality is most people either don’t get selected at all when they arrive at court or only serve on very short cases so more likely to be a few days than two full weeks.
I don’t want to join the sanctimonious but I work with many people who complain they could be earning twice as much by being a self employed contractor. They don’t get that we might pay them less each month but they have security if they are sick, cover for jury duty, life insurance, employment rights and redundancy pay and notice periods if things go bad plus a bunch of other benefits that they can opt to “pay” for but which are far cheaper as an employee than if they were on there own.
Nobody is saying they shouldn’t do their civic duty.
C) Ignore it and risk the £1000 fine, your still £2000 better off.
1. Ignore the letter. It’s not recorded delivery. You will go to hell and Karma will get you etc.
. Write a letter claiming you’d be on the poverty line and see what they say.
4. Defer it, save some cash and do it when you’re called up again
Just scanning the first bit of the thread
What if the case is that of someone who tried to fraudulently get out of jury duty through some spurious claim but was financially driven?
Your wife could bring balance to the jury who would otherwise be bitter about having to do it and also not being paid as much.
Group of your peers.
we still have ........, school fees, car etc etc
I'm sure most taxpayers would love to pay your missus extra for jury service just so that you can afford little Johnny's private school fees...................... 🤬
Funnily enough, I've just been browsing through my household insurance policy and found that it is possible to get cover for loss of income.
Basically the cover seems to pay the difference between your usual work income and the amount the court pays. It's part of the legal expenses cover on my Lloyd's bank house policy.
Might be worth a look for £25 per annum.
However if it helps at all the court won’t start (the jury part) until 10am usually, will have a full hour for lunch and often aim to finish by 4.
something I found quite frustrating how little use was made of the jury versus the amount of disruption created : Being called in - waiting around - being sent home. Not finding out till the morning that you won't be required til the afternoon. Going in the afternoon and only actually being in the courtroom for 15 minutes. Across a week of 'Jury Service' I doubt if I actually sat in the court room for more than a total of an hour or so and the vast majority of our time was spent waiting outside while deals and brinksmanship went on behind closed doors. Waiting in huge foyers with no seats - waiting in tiny airless windowless rooms - waiting and being uncomfortable for indefinite periods seemed to be principally what we'd be summonsed to do.
It strikes me, what with this being the 21st Century and everything , they could have selected the jury on the Monday - spent all week fannying about in our absence and shown us a video tape of what we'd missed on the Friday and we could have deliberated on that while the information was fresh in our memories. There seemed to be no purpose in us being there in person in between being sworn in being and nominating someone to say either one or two words at the end - its not like we could interject with our own lines of interogation or boo/cheer/throw rotten fruit- so why not just show us the edited highlights?
It she's self employed it's easy. Just sent a letter in stating you can't afford the longer term implications of not working. If you get stuck on a case for 10 weeks, what happens to the business? It's not the here and now that's the issue. It's the long term effect.
Or do what most do, throw the letter in the bin and forget about it. It's not sent recorded, they have no proof of receipt.
I did 7 weeks jury service about 2-3 years ago. Im a Project Manager so it caused a lot of greif for my projects at the time trying to cover both. My employer was stretched so couldnt really provide full cover. I didnt suffer any financial loss as my company paid me anyway but I also got grief from some individual managers as well who assumed I was skiving and it reflected badly in the following appraisal/pay review. I think that reflects more on them as individuals though (t*****rs). I did defer it twice before doing it and the court were really good about that.
Three of the jury were self employed so took quite a financial hit, but they didnt really complain about it, just got on with doing the job.
I dont regret doing it at all and will happily do it again. I see it as a service to society that I was proud to do. We all get hit by unexpected costs and this is just one of those things.
Andy, surely one of the first things you do as a project manager is a risk assessment on the various effects absences have on the project. I certainly had to when in that role. Much to the chagrin of many when they found out their talents were not unique and that they were replaceable.
Ha ha, of course, and it was agreed 7 months before and reviewed regularly leading up to it, that full time cover would be allocated but the cockwombles decided not to....
Unfortunately you won't get much sympathy here as is you earn more than £25k and have a car or bike that's less than 3 years old you're apparently leading a extravagant lifestyle and any mention of finances raises the hackles of those presumably scraping by on minimum wage, just ignore them.
As for solutions, can't say I have any other than defer now and possibly go down the fine route if you need to - no way would I happily suck up a £2-3k loss 'to do my civic duty' especially as I'd already be paying a crap load more in taxes than the average earning person.
Also what happens if you get put on a long-running trial - are they easier to opt out of or is it just pot luck? Presumably quite a lot of trials go on for more than 2 weeks? I'm salaried and we even have a time code to book jury service to so wouldn't mind two weeks of it but 4+ weeks would start to cause quite a few issues (I'm far from irreplaceable on the whole but on short notice for a temporary period I would be...)
Also what happens if you get put on a long-running trial
Interesting how jurors were able to take time off for holidays (and that you can defer jury service on the basis that you have booked a holiday)- that holidays are somehow more crucial and pressing a reason to halt the trail than work
maccruiskeen that was a 320 day trial few employees work 320 days without a holiday , it looks like all the jury, judge barrister got the same slot off . there is such a thing as statutory holiday rights 28 days per year so 15 for 320 days seems about right.
Crankboy - they heard evidence for 320 days, which Would actually be more like 35 days Holliday (as the court only sits mon-fri). Concentrating on one case for that long sounds tough.
Wow! I suspect 'falling ill' also includes dying of boredom.
However.........
the real question there is - her 75 year old Uncle who was acquitted of all charges (about 1/3 of the way down the article if you can't be arsed to read it all)
Please tell me that's the best example of nominative determinism ever, and he makes his living playing specialist panto roles.
I'm doing my third stint of Jury Service next week. I'll be taking a book and a work laptop (since I'm now a common or garden wage slave).
Previously in my (socially irresponsible, but you can't get a contract job without one) Ltd Company days my Professional Indemnity Insurance came with free Jury Service cover.
Might be worth looking into if your wife has that cover.
Here's what actually happens: Your wife will wait, increasingly bored, for the best part of week or even two (in my case) before her card gets drawn and she goes down to the court with about 16 others. Before the final selection the judge will tell the jurors that the case is expected to last X number of days and if this causes a problem for anybody, they can speak up and will get sent back upstairs for another shot at selection. It's why the Jury Service has to keep a far bigger number of jurors on hand at any time for the courts they service.