Bloody jury service

[fussychica]

In all my years at work, where I would have been paid by my employer, I was never called for jury service. I'm now retired and I've been called right in the middle of the summer. Although I don't mind doing the actual thing getting there will be a nightmare, (I dont drive) and the subsistance doesnt even cover 2 drinks let alone lunch. I dont have an actual holiday booked but had quite a few plans for this part of the summer. I know its my civic duty but Im a bit pissed off about it as if you couldnt tell

I would love to be called up during the next few months as work-wise that would be quite convenient timing and I'd be happy to have paid time out of the office! (I think my employer gives full pay). After that it would be less convenient and tbh I probably would be annoyed if I was out of pocket but I guess it's just one of those things.

To all those whining about having to do the jury service (particularly the "busy and important" types): I am a person just like you, high flying international job, diary bursting at the seams, lots of people relying on me etc etc

My family member was murdered in a random attack when stepping in to prevent a crime being committed. I am eternally grateful to the 15 people (Scotland) who served diligently on the jury at the trial of the person who is now in jail for life as a result. Funnily enough I found the time away from my job to attend the trial. We must all support the system because we never know when we will need it and (bearing in mind Blondegirl's experience) it is PARTICULARLY important that those of us with good educations who have ended up being successful people take the time to serve on juries.

I think we have no problem with that Jessie but the system needs to allow those who have busy work diaries. For example a surgeon might have operations booked. He or she could well fix 2 weeks next summer 2016 when he can be free. If the system will let you book your time about 12 months in advance and then you arrange your diaries around that that would make me much more comfortable. I would still lose an awful lot of money over the two weeks (self employed, no savings, single mother) but it would be more doable than a random set of dates given to you without enough notice.

Lotus you can insure against the loss of income:

*Insurance for a contractor

It is possible to insure. For example Qdos Contractor, a broker, has a product covering jury service and legal protection at 66 a year. This specialises in self-employed white collar contractors. This covers any periods for which the insured is obliged to attend court for jury service where the cost is not recoverable from the relevant court for up to a maximum of 500 a day and limited to 5,000 for any one claim. See www.shop.qdosconsulting.com and its menu of products. Call 0116 269 0999. Claimants need to demonstrate, for example, fee income contracts.

Sold through brokers and other intermediaries DAS, a specialist legal expenses insurer, also includes jury service under its policies for individuals and commercial enterprises.

I'm not an insurance fan actually, more of a risk taker actually. I've not been called up in 30 years of continuous working life so far (although some of that I would not have been eligible) so I'll just take the risk.

Why do people think you should Evdn get subsistence ? You'd have to eat at work

I like the idea people thing trials will be interesting. Very very rarely are. And I agree that propels concentrating for hours is very wearing.

I think the deliberations would drive me nuts.

I must have been lucky then as both times I've done it the cases have been interesting and the deliberations also fine. Concentrating for hours on one thing was fine too, total change from my day to day existence but very do-able, it was never more than a couple of hours at a time anyway, short days and breaks saw to that.

Yes but when you talk about risk you mean the risk of not being exempted after asking to be, don't you Lotus? Would it not be more socially responsible to make arrangements that mean you would not need to ask to be exempted and could just do your civic duty? 66 quid a year is a drop in the ocean when you earn a grand a day in fees.

But 66 quid a year doesn't insure against a loss of £1000 a day in fees. It's insurance for 2 weeks at £500 a day only. For contract work £500 a day is not particularly high.

For me I could insure against/cope with the monetary loss for a 2 week trial. It's the ongoing issues that having 2 weeks off would cause.

I work on short term contracts, the people who are employing me would not expect me to have 2 weeks off mid contract and it would not be favourably looked on at all.

I would have no problem if I could arrange it so that I could serve 2 weeks between contracts and limit it to 2 weeks.

I did jury service once about ten years ago. I honestly didn't mind it, was a lot of waiting round I agree but I didn't mind. Tho I wasn't impressed with the fact we left by the back of the court but then had to walk past the front of the court where the defendants family were stood staring which was quite intimidating!

That was only an example of one policy, I am sure that there is cover out there more fitting to your/Lotus' particular expsoure that can be obtained for a sensible premium. As Lotus says, she has not been called up in 30 years so she's a good risk. She'll have a broker who gets her Professional Indemnity insurance for her, probably Critical Illness over too, sure he could look into this as well.

In terms of loss of ongoing business/goodwill, it would be entirely unreasonable for a client to decide never again to work with a contractor just because they were unavailable for one contract due to jury service. If the jury-serving contractor loses a client to a competitor over this it is probaly because the contractor's service was not up to par or their pricing was not competitive anyway.

Dos - I think one should get subsistence to make up for loss of earnings. By the end of my next stint as a juror next month I will have done nine weeks over three summons in six years (or more if I get another long trail). In those nine weeks I lose money from the contractor part of my work. I also pay an extra day in childcare as I usually only work a four day week. While I appreciate it's an important duty I don't think I should be out of pocket for undertaking that duty.

And I stand by what I said earlier. Every jury I have sat on has had a majority of quite confused people. The bias towards finding a defendant innocent has been really noticeable mainly due to a misunderstanding of "beyond reasonable doubt". I think jurors should be educated for a full day before each duty with lectures and Q&A sessions on how the system works and what their duty actually is.

Jessie, that's great except (a) I'm not a contractor (b) if I was allocated to a trial lasting more than 3 weeks I'd lose more than £5k. Unlike Lotus I am a fan of Insurance having seen first hand the financial devastation that can happen when fate comes calling and people aren't insured. But if I can't actually get insurance to cover my losses, what then? Default on my mortgage?

How do you know you can't get insurance Narvin? I just highlighted the possibility of Business Interruption insurance covering jury service, I wasn't suggesting it was exclusive to contractors. Perhaps a bit of research might prove you wrong. That Telegraph article linked by someone above is where I got the info from and it suggested that cover might also be available in other forms.

However if we assume that you can't get insurance then of course I would not expect you to lose out to the extent that you default on your mortgage, or even indeed to take any more than a nominal financial hit.

My point was simply that those who have successful careers are more likely to have the instant reaction of "how can I get out of this?" rather than " Is there a way I can make this work?" which seems a shame given the value they would bring to the process.

How does childcare work? I wouldn't object to being on a jury, but if I could find childcare (tricky) I wouldn't be able to pay £250+ a week upfront.

My mum got called up last year. She deferred it once as she was going on holiday. She had to do it a few weeks later.

I previously always wanted to get called up as I thought it would be fascinating, however, mum got put on the jury for a quite harrowing child abuse case. She found the details extremely difficult to listen to and felt a huge responsibility to ensure that the right result was got for the victims. They found the bloke guilty on all charges except for the very first victim to come forward, due to some technicality, although they all agreed that he had abused her, and my mum felt that they had let her down.

She had to listen to stuff that this man had done to children aged around 5yo and having a granddaughter the same age, found it very difficult.

The case lasted a week and she was stood down from jury service for a second week due to the harrowing nature of the case they were on, the judge did not expect them to do another week.

If I were called up now, I would find it extremely difficult to manage with childcare before and after school. The trains are erratic. There are no childminders here. I am a single parent with DD's father living 2.5 hours away so no help from him ever. I am self employed, so would probably lose a lot of my earnings, as they never pay enough to cover what you actually lose. I could not be on a case that lasted for 8 weeks as I would not be able to cover my work for that length of time. I have weekly and fortnightly clients and there is no way that I could not do that work for anything longer than 1 week.

So whilst I think it is a good thing to do, I do think that it should not be compulsary if it would cause extreme problems to your own life.

but you would eat lunch regardless...

Jessie I've contacted my home insurers and they cap cover at £500 - which is useless.

As a self employed contractor buying my own lunch would be the least of my worries - losing my business and my house would be a real possibility.

Having done some research today I can confirm that Nationwide include proper cover for jury service induced loss of earnings (ie covering your losses not paying a token amount) as an add on to buildings and contents insurance. So I've changed my buildings and contents insurer to them and I'm feeling much more relaxed now.

So what's the alternative? Should there be a pool of trained, vetted (and paid) jurors?

I wonder how many jury trials actually go ahead and how much it would cost the criminal justice system to implement this? It does seem a very wasteful and random system at the moment.

Brilliant Narvin

I would like that, Beryl! I could become a Pro Juror! What a great way to get back in the saddle after a break for kids or illness etc. yep, I'm definitely up for it.

An argument against might be that you wouldn't want to let the sort of person who might want to do that, do that (because they might want to do it for dodgy reasons) but hell, we let people who want to be politicians be politicians, so...