Jury Duty/ Self employed -Question.

kbell

Ive been called for jury duty in January, reading through the letter i received, i understand that employers can compensate employees for days off whilst attending.
What is the procedure for a self employed person?
Can they provide evidence of earnings/accounts for compensation?

PCPhoto

self employed people are exempt and can excuse themselves from serving - have a look at the list of exemptions with the jury duty notice.

nkay1985

If you're self-employed you don't get paid. The state don't compensate people so if you're self-employed, you're out of pocket.

When my Dad was called he wrote them a letter explaining that he had a new business and taking potentially weeks off would be detrimental to his business. You could try something similar if it'll have a bad affect of your business.

kbell

Cheers, i kinda want to do this though, never been in a court room situation before, but if it ran over a few days or longer i don't know...

nkay1985

kbell wrote: »

Cheers, i kinda want to do this though, never been in a court room situation before, but if it ran over a few days or longer i don't know...

Yeah you're not automatically exempt though as the previous poster said. If you look at the list of exemptions, that isn't there but you could probably be excused if you write to them.

I did jury duty this year and, like you, was interested. I ended up missing about 6 days from work in total.

nuac

If you are self employed and are called for jury duty, reply to Co Register setting out your difficulties as a self employed person.

ResearchWill

If you want to give it a go this is what usually happens. Jury panels usually do one or two weeks. You will arrive in the first day and roll taken, then when a trial is ready to pick a jury the panel will be informed who the accused is he will be standing in the dock, and the jury panel will be informed the general area the crime was committed and the area any important witness are from. This is so any person from those areas does not sit on the jury. Next you will be told how long the case is expected to run in most cases a day or two, maybe a lot more but you will be informed.

Then the jury is called one by one and before each juror takes the oath he or she may be objected to by either side. Once 12 people are picked that's the jury for that trial. This happened untill all trials have a jury. Then the rest of the panel are told to go home untill the next morning or another day if trials will be running longer than a day.

The above is repeated untill your jury duty is over, for most people it's arrive in at 10 and gone before lunch each day. If by chance you are called to a trial that will run for a number of weeks then you can inform the tipstaff of the fact that you are self employed and can't afford the time the judge will excuse you from that trial.

Of course if you don't want to go at all just contact the circuit court office and they will excuse you.

kbell

I gave the court office a call and spoke to a nice lady, i explained my situation and she said to just to fill out the exemption part on the form stating i was self employed and the loss of earnings etc....
Said it wouldn't be a problem.