I am a business owner in California. I am the financial half of the company (payroll, billing, recievables, payables, etc…) and my wife is the program half of the company. I do not have any employees assist me in any of my operations; the employees work with developmentally disabled adults who have rights to their confidentiallity, including those on my payroll who do work for our company doing janitorial work. My time is valuable and I work long hours, some Saturdays included. My time is worth $50 to $70 hour.
I received a subpeona for employee records for one of my employees (not dev. disabled) from a copy service sent by a law firm. I signed the subpeona (recieving the order) and I was given a $15 dollar check (customary in this state) to offset the copying charge, which doesn’t cover the cost of my time, my paper, and copying charges. The copy service clerk offered to do the copying for me if I would just give him the records. I told him that due to confidentiallity rights, I cannot give him the payroll records since some of my employees are developmentally disabled and are entitled to privacy from any third party. Since there are three years of records on this employee, I have 72 payroll files to dig out, collect, search, copy that employee’s payroll run, separate from other employees (some who are dev. disabled) who were copied from the same payroll run, and copy here personnel file. I calculated that there will be about 368 sheets copied and I will spend 8 hours on this order. I returned a quote of $436.80 to cover the cost of my time, paper and copying charges. I called the copy service clerk and gave him this quote to pass on to the attorneys who are requesting the records. This original subpeona is due 8/22/03.
Just two days ago, the copy service clerk came in with another subpeona that supercedes the original. The subpeona basically says that I now have to be physically present with the records on 9/8/03 at 4:30pm at a location 50 miles from my office and another check for $35 to cover “travel costs”. I asked the copy service clerk if he knows anything about the legal group who ignored my quote and wants to play hard ball and he said that they are citing some law where the max cost is $16 per hour to get the records (which they didn’t even supply money to cover my time at this rate!) which I think is a bluff (I believe the copy service company is subject to this - not a private employer).
I consider my self a respectable and honest business owner and others in the community have recognized us for what we do. I have done other subpeonas and the money paid for my time is given to non-profit charities or sports teams in the area because other monies received in our business are not allowed to be donated, only money recieved from outside the social services we provide can be donated. So, I feel justified in asking for what I am worth when it comes to my time.
Ok, now here’s the question - Can I put a stop to this current subpeona using the reasoning above and ask that the time I spent getting the records be fairly compensated? Is an injunction or some other legal step necessary to make the legal group realize that I am not just some secretary doing their bidding? I do have to admit that I am offended by this group and my “business ego” is at stake as well.
Thank you in advance for your time in reading and responding to this long overdrawn OP…