i never received a jury summons in the mail and now they want me to contact them or face a 1500 dollar fine.i’ve been unable to work for the past 5 yrs.what should i do?
Contact them.
First ensure that it’s really a legal summons. There’s a bunch of scam calls going on around here. It may be more widespread.
Hard to make sense of your query. If you don’t contact them you will be in trouble…
Sounds like the message is giving you an out: Contact them OR face a possible fine. So they’re still giving you a chance to deal with it. That addesses the question about you never getting the summons.
Whether you’re able to do jury duty is separate issue. If you’re disabled, you should be given an opportunity to make that case.
Note that lots of people try to weasel out of jury duty in all sorts of creative ways, and as a result, judges and jury commissioners tend to be hard-nosed about letting people off. If you’re sentient enough to post in a message board, and able-bodied enough to breathe under your own power while they wheel you into the jury room on a gurney, they may insist you “do your duty”.
I was in a jury selection once a few years ago. One guy felt he should be exempt because he was simultaneously on-call as a witness in another case just down the hall. The judge didn’t let him off.
Jury duty isn’t bad. most of the time, if you appear remotely intelligent, the defense lawyer will reject you. Bring lots of reading material.
Does “unable to work” necessarily mean “unable to serve on a jury?”
Probably not. But it probably means “unable to pay a 1500 dollar fine”.
misskitty, look on the back of the summons. Isn’t there a list of disqualifers that allow potential jurors to be excused from service? Follow the instructions provided there if one or more of the conditions apply to you.
Completely incorrect in my experience.
If it’s a scam - which seems likely, if the “1500 dollar fee” notice got to her but the purported summonses did not), then there wouldn’t BE any summons.
I’d do as others have suggested and call the local authorities directly, NOT by calling whatever number was on the threatening letter, and ask them to help you sort it out.
If it’s genuine, they’ll help you. If it’s not, they may know to whom to report it.
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This seems more like an advice question (especially since it involves legal issues) than a factual question.
Moving thread from General Question to In My Humble Opinion.
Looks to me like you have two options:
- Contact them
- Face a 1500 dollar fine
I’m failing to see what the issue here is.
This is the kind of keen insight you can only find from the geniuses that hang out on this board. You’re welcome.
The scam (and I’m assuming it’s a scam) is that the OP will call the phone number, and the person on the other end will offer to settle the problem right away for $500 or so.
This is one time that the police can actually be your friend. At the very least, they know what a real court order looks like.
Mostly the scam is done over the phone. Often to recent immigrants. Around here it is the more common method is for the scammer to claim to be from the IRS and say that a warrant is being signed for not paying taxes. Unfortunately some recent immigrants, especially the elderly, don’t understand that the IRS would not be speaking in Gujarati to them. The OP certainly does sound like it could be a scam.
Assuming that the OP is not just a drive by posted who won’t come back, was this notification done by phone? Most if not all jurisdictions will send written notification.
A while back, I was in that same situation. I just let the jury room supervisor know about it, and my jury duty was rescheduled. No big deal. And I ended up not getting called in as a witness on the other case.
No, the problem here is that you did not read the rest of the thread and you are giving here information that might get her ripped off.
When I’ve been on jury duty the clerks attempt to call people who did not show up on the day of their appearance.
Calling the court is by far the best advice.
As I said, when I was on jury duty the clerks called, but they certainly did not threaten anyone with anything. I’ve gotten the IRS scam call once - or my answering machine did. They gave a number to call. However most people expect to get paper from the court regarding jury duty, so a scammer might well use letters as looking more authentic.
I’ve never seen anyone rejected on this basis. In a case I was on for five minutes before it got settled, an expert in the area was in the pool. He did get rejected, but only because he refused to say he’d leave his subject matter knowledge outside of the jury room. IIRC the judge dismissed him, not the defense. The plaintiff’s lawyer didn’t question anybody.
Mailings cost money. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but the usual method for the scam is a phone call only.