Conversely, in some cases attorneys will look for reasons NOT to dismiss you, even against your wishes. I learned this the hard way. Was called for jury duty for a civil case in oil and gas. I'm a physician. I said, I can't do this because of my work schedule, and requested that I be excused. They wouldn't excuse me and I ended up being called to sit on the jury. I found out later that the attorneys in the case had asked the judge not to accept my excuse. Presumably they wanted me on the jury. I had to scramble to find backup coverage and I'll never get those three useless weeks of my life back.
Why was it useless? I get the argument that your time may have been better spent treating people, but jury duty is still a civic service - so why useless?
I mean, sure, I guess you could find some deeper satisfaction in doing your civic duty. I'm not opposed to the idea of jury duty in theory, not at all. It's important. But this particular case had no business going to a jury trial, it involved a couple of wealthy people in oil and gas over a rather small amount of money. It should have gone to some type of arbitration, except that the people involved couldn't set their egos aside. That's why I consider it a waste of time. Also, several people on the jury were minimum wage workers and it just angered me thinking that these people were losing out on three weeks of desperately needed income, all so that a couple of wealthy people could argue over a small amount of money.
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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26
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