# How do jurors on long trials pay their bills **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 5, 2023, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068 "2023-06-05T23:21:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Quintas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/48db29/32.png) [@Quintas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quintas)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2023, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/1 "2023-06-05T23:21:28Z")
I started my first experience with jury duty this morning. We are only expected to be available for this week, so no big deal. It began with the judge offering to hear from anyone to whom this may cause undue hardship. Only 3 people out of the pool of I’d guess 60 requested to speak with him due to this. But what happens in one of those rare extreme cases where a trial is expected to go for months. This would be impossible for nearly everyone who isn’t already retired or independently wealthy. I believe most states require an employer to hold your job, but that doesn’t mean they are required to pay you. Are there circumstances where the bank will put your mortgage on hold? Utility companies? Credit cards? I’m happy to do my civic duty but I’d be pretty upset if it meant bankrupting myself in the process. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2023, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/2 "2023-06-05T23:24:24Z")
Every company I’ve ever worked for paid me for my time on jury duty. I think it’s fair to say that most large company salaried employees would get paid for their time on jury duty. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2023, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/3 "2023-06-05T23:24:57Z")
For long trials, anyone who will experience an economic hardship is usually excused. Some employers, like Boeing, or city and county governments, often pay juror salaries without time limits. So, you get those people, and retired people, and sometimes students. It’s a problem, but they have figured out ways to deal with it. You do lose some of the diversity of backgrounds that you would hope to get. ---
**Author:** ![Quintas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/48db29/32.png) [@Quintas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quintas)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2023, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/4 "2023-06-05T23:26:48Z")
Oh ok. I’m salaried at what I guess would be a medium sized company and I had to either use vacation time or take the week unpaid. Maybe they have a more generous policy in the unlikely event of a really long stint. Guess I’ll ask HR out of curiosity. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2023, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/5 "2023-06-05T23:54:16Z")
States provide daily payment for jury service. Surely if you live in New Jersey, $5/day is adequate to cover your bills? > **[Jury Duty Pay By State - JuryDuty101](https://www.juryduty101.com/juror-pay-by-state)** > > ... ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2023, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/6 "2023-06-05T23:58:24Z")
ETA: @Quintas two above. Probably not, but better to know than to guess. I was recently on jury duty for what was expected to be a two week trial. About 1/3rd of the 100+ juror candidates interviewed had significant hardships either due to work or childcare that would make even that duration trial too hard for them. So they were released. One of the people released was a 50yo dentist with expensive tastes in clothing. He said, perhaps truthfully, that being in a solo practice he’d have to close the office, send his 5 staffers home, and cancel two week’s worth of 10-15 appointments per day = 100-150 inconvenienced people. They let him go. One of the side effects of the hardship thing is very few working _age_ women or working _class_ men ended up in the remaining pool. It was mostly white collar professionals and retirees. And yes, that pool was rather whiter and a bunch older after the hardship filter than it was before. I had no hardship and as a unionized worker would be paid full rate no matter how long the trial took, even years, and with no concerns for management retaliation or office political consequences. In that sense I was the ideal candidate. Nonetheless I didn’t make the cut for reasons unexplained and never learned how long the trial actually took. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/7 "2023-06-06T00:32:04Z")
I served on a jury for a two-week period (right after getting laid off, so it was actually a nice diversion, even if it was a murder trial). I had a generous severance package from my company, so finances weren’t an issue. But think they had a policy that employees had would have to pay back what the state paid, which was something like $20 a day. Also jury duty pay gets taxed as earned income. Minnesota also pays parking/travel fees, and according to this PDF document, jurors can request child care reimbursement. > **[ssjury.pdf](https://www.house.mn.gov/hrd/pubs/ss/ssjury.pdf)** > > 171.91 KB ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/8 "2023-06-06T01:25:35Z")
> [@JohnGalt](#): > > But think they had a policy that employees had would have to pay back what the state paid, which was something like $20 a day. Also jury duty pay gets taxed as earned income. Yeah. Under our contract any jury pay received has to be turned over to the employer. So the State has pre-empted that trick by refusing to pay jury pay to anyone who’d have to forfeit it. They’re not in the business of subsidizing business. As part of the jury service intake paperwork you have to say whether your employer will take your jury pay. If so, none for you. ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/9 "2023-06-06T02:42:45Z")
I had JD a month ago and got a check for $35 for the day. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/10 "2023-06-06T03:52:28Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > One of the side effects of the hardship thing is very few working _age_ women or working _class_ men ended up in the remaining pool. It was mostly white collar professionals and retirees. And yes, that pool was rather whiter and a bunch older after the hardship filter than it was before. Anecdotally, the one time I wound up on a jury at age 28, I was easily the youngest juror by at least 25-30 years, and the jury was 100% white. One of the jurors was a woman in her 80s who told us this was the first time she’d been on a jury since the '50s! At the time I had recently lost my job and had been hired for my current job but I was still two weeks away from my start date, so I didn’t have anything better to do and was more than willing to give up a day of my time in exchange for $17. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/11 "2023-06-06T04:22:05Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Every company I’ve ever worked for paid me for my time on jury duty. I think it’s fair to say that most large company salaried employees would get paid for their time on jury duty. My employers have had that policy as well. I served on a grand jury that went on forever (every Wednesday afternoon for… I don’t remember, but it was many months, maybe more than a year) and one of our members did lose her job and believed that was why, and a self employed man got very cranky about the time he’d lost by the end. The DA asked us to extend our term a second time, and we said, “no, convene a new grand jury.” ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/12 "2023-06-06T04:44:37Z")
I had a colleague at my first job, who wound up on the jury for what was, at that time (mid 1990s), [a fairly high-profile murder trial](https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/june-july-2019/revisiting-a-made-for-netflix-scandal-on-the-north-shore/) here in Chicago. She wound up on the jury for something like six weeks, and though the company paid her during that time, she still had some work projects which had to get done (and there was really no one else in the organization who knew how to do what she did), which meant that she was coming into the office in the evening, and on weekends, to do her job. ---
**Author:** ![JacobSwan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@JacobSwan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JacobSwan)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/13 "2023-06-06T08:50:15Z")
Back in the '80’s in the UK, my father got called for jury duty. At the time he was on a rotating shift pattern and was scheduled to work nights for the week of the trial. His company tried to get out of paying him as he wasn’t serving on the Jury during his working hours. They made him take the week as leave. Luckily his Union didn’t agree and after a few months of negotiations he got his leave back and the company policies were updated. Join a union!! ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/14 "2023-06-06T10:09:24Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > So the State has pre-empted that trick by refusing to pay jury pay to anyone who’d have to forfeit it. They’re not in the business of subsidizing business. As part of the jury service intake paperwork you have to say whether your employer will take your jury pay. If so, none for you. This nickel-and-diming is a little weird when the company has no legal obligation to pay you. You’d think the state would be delighted with companies that choose to be generous, since it expands the juror pool. In any case, a company (with our without union) where the arrangement is full pay could just pay you your full pay minus the state stipend and you could honestly say that your employer is not taking it. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/15 "2023-06-06T12:13:13Z")
Of course the legislature considered that little trick. Any form of employer pay offset also triggers the “no jury pay for you” feature. There may in fact be state laws in some states mandating that all companies above a certain size pay full wages to jurors. I’m not interested enough to go sleuthing. There are certainly laws against retaliating against jurors, but enforcement is obviously pretty lax at the lower end of the employer and worker food chain. For sure the operational impact on the employer matters a lot less for someone who is a completely interchangeable cog in a large machine, such as myself, versus someone of more unique duties like my great grandboss or his admin assistant. So company size is a really poor proxy for how much disruption the loss of any particular worker will be. But it is a pretty good proxy for whether a weeks, month’s, or year’s wages for this person matters materially to the employer’s bottom line. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/16 "2023-06-06T13:17:05Z")
> [@Quintas](#): > > But what happens in one of those rare extreme cases where a trial is expected to go for months. This would be impossible for nearly everyone who isn’t already retired or independently wealthy. For trials that take that long to play out, do they really require a jury sitting from 9-5 every single day to hear testimony/evidence? Or is it just a day or two per week during which court is in session, interspersed with days where both sides are prepping documents/witnesses/evidence and dealing with administrative issues that don’t require a jury to be present? ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/17 "2023-06-06T13:25:45Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > For long trials, anyone who will experience an economic hardship is usually excused. Some employers, like Boeing, or city and county governments, often pay juror salaries without time limits. So, you get those people, and retired people, and sometimes students. Years ago, talking to friends in the court system, this is what they described. Retirees, government employees, and certain large employers were the known pools for long jury trials. Everyone else was able to get excused due to economic hardship. So, not really a complete cross-section of peers, yah? ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/18 "2023-06-06T13:48:00Z")
California pays $15/day, from day 2 onward (you get to lose all income for day 1). ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/19 "2023-06-06T13:56:03Z")
When I was on jury duty for 2 days I was paid by my employer and also $15 a day by the state. The company policy was to give that $30 to the company since they were paying me full salary. I did that, not gonna brag about it with my actual salary but in comparison $15 was a trivial amount. I’m not sure what other employees had done in the past but no one seemed to know what to do with that trivial amount of money. Finally the treasurer contacted me and she took care of it herself. We had a little chuckle over how that was an important contribution to the bonus pool. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068/20 "2023-06-06T14:44:59Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > When I was on jury duty for 2 days I was paid by my employer and also $15 a day by the state. I received 10 bucks a day for the two-day trial where I was a juror. My employer paid me full wages and I got to keep the 20 dollars. I was quite smug about it until I got a 1099 from the state the next year. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-jurors-on-long-trials-pay-their-bills/985068.md?page=2)