Dodged a biological bullet!
Apr. 14th, 2021 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneEarly March received a summons for jury duty.
Now, normally, I wouldn't mind that. But these are far from normal times.
In addition to the fact that we currently have a plague throughout the nation, I have no active immune system! While I have received both shots, we really have no idea how my body will react if I were to get infected. I can weather the flu, or a cold, or sinus infections. Covid is a whole new ballgame, and one that I would rather not play if I can avoid it.
Add to that, the quality of our local hospital is very dubious. Honestly, you do not want to hear some of the stories that I know. From personal experience, when I had a kidney stone and went to the ER, the PA who saw me - not a doctor - somehow claimed that I had a 6.5mm kidney stone. Nowhere on the reports was the number 6.5 to be found. It was a 2.5 or 3.5mm stone. Apparently reading is not a skill required to be a PA.
ANYWAY, I emailed my immunologist, and he said NO, I should absolutely not serve on jury duty and he would provide a letter. I fill out the online questionaire and under the medical problem I put that I have an immune disorder and my body doesn't produce antibodies and that my doctor thinks it would be dangerous for me to serve during the pandemic, I will provide a letter as soon as he mails one to me. They also have a PDF form that you can download and print. Oddly, it's not one that you can fill-out online and print directly: you have to print it and either type on it or fill it out by hand.
So I email the form to my doc, along with all the information for them to fill in the blanks. As it happens, I also have an appointment with him coming up (it was yesterday, all is well). And the next day I get an email from him with the PDF returned. All that was in it was the description saying "Mr. West has been a patient since 2009 (describes condition) and serving during the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic or flu season could result in serious illness or hospitalization blah blah blah." It was well-done and fairly scary.
Two weeks ago was my week off work, and I keep meaning to get down to Alamo and take care of this, but I keep getting distracted by other stuff that I need to do. And in my brain I'm thinking that the jury duty service was later in April.
It wasn't. I was supposed to report for duty on April 1.
I found this out when I looked at my paperwork on April 2. At around lunch time. And Russet was out getting an echocardiogram.
I had no idea what they did if you didn't report when you were supposed to: did they issue a warrant for the first offense?
For various reasons, I didn't want to leave the dogs alone. She got here and I headed out. There are two court complexes in Alamo, I went to the closest. There were hardly any cars there, so obviously I had gone to the wrong one. Still, I went in, and no one was in the lobby, but the door was not locked so that was a good sign. I apologized to the clerk, she said there had been no cases on the 1st, so no big deal. Anyway, I needed to go to the main court house at the other location, so back in the car and start driving again.
It wasn't remotely a straight path because they're building a dedicated left turn lane at the blind school where I used to work, and that's keeping that intersection screwed up for a year. I get around that, and eventually get to the right court house. Naturally, this one has proper security, which takes a bit to get through. I get there - before 5 pm - and find out everyone from jury services has gone home for the weekend.
Huh. Maybe calling when I figured out that I'd screwed up might have been a good idea.
NAH. Driving down in a rush and squirreling about was clearly much more sensible!
SO, I text my boss and tell her that I MIGHT be on jury duty Monday morning. Get up awfully bloody early, I'm at the court house before they open. The lobby is open, all the windows are closed. There's actually someone there before me: I think he's there to pay a fine or something, he goes to a different window when they open. I go to the jury pool window, guy takes my number and looks it up.
I had been excused. They either did not send the notice or it has not arrived in the mail yet.
Funny they didn't bother with this new-fangled invention they've got called E-MAIL.
Apparently my original response was good enough, and they didn't need the two letters from my doctor.
Ah, I didn't mention the second letter. When I have an appointment with my immunologist, I need bloodwork done. I have them mail it to me and I carry it to the lab, and they included another letter from my doc. So I had the PDF of the official 'get out of jury duty free for medical reasons' form plus this second letter on me when I went that Monday morning to find out my fate.
But the PDF by itself was problematic: while it had a very good response by the doctor: it had no other information! It didn't have my badge number, the summons number, court number, it didn't even have my name! And there were strict warnings that the form could not be altered, so I didn't want to make any changes to it by adding those pieces without someone from that department seeing me do it.
I found everything more than a bit stressful, and in the end, it was all meaningless as I had already been excused and didn't know it!
Now, normally, I wouldn't mind that. But these are far from normal times.
In addition to the fact that we currently have a plague throughout the nation, I have no active immune system! While I have received both shots, we really have no idea how my body will react if I were to get infected. I can weather the flu, or a cold, or sinus infections. Covid is a whole new ballgame, and one that I would rather not play if I can avoid it.
Add to that, the quality of our local hospital is very dubious. Honestly, you do not want to hear some of the stories that I know. From personal experience, when I had a kidney stone and went to the ER, the PA who saw me - not a doctor - somehow claimed that I had a 6.5mm kidney stone. Nowhere on the reports was the number 6.5 to be found. It was a 2.5 or 3.5mm stone. Apparently reading is not a skill required to be a PA.
ANYWAY, I emailed my immunologist, and he said NO, I should absolutely not serve on jury duty and he would provide a letter. I fill out the online questionaire and under the medical problem I put that I have an immune disorder and my body doesn't produce antibodies and that my doctor thinks it would be dangerous for me to serve during the pandemic, I will provide a letter as soon as he mails one to me. They also have a PDF form that you can download and print. Oddly, it's not one that you can fill-out online and print directly: you have to print it and either type on it or fill it out by hand.
So I email the form to my doc, along with all the information for them to fill in the blanks. As it happens, I also have an appointment with him coming up (it was yesterday, all is well). And the next day I get an email from him with the PDF returned. All that was in it was the description saying "Mr. West has been a patient since 2009 (describes condition) and serving during the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic or flu season could result in serious illness or hospitalization blah blah blah." It was well-done and fairly scary.
Two weeks ago was my week off work, and I keep meaning to get down to Alamo and take care of this, but I keep getting distracted by other stuff that I need to do. And in my brain I'm thinking that the jury duty service was later in April.
It wasn't. I was supposed to report for duty on April 1.
I found this out when I looked at my paperwork on April 2. At around lunch time. And Russet was out getting an echocardiogram.
I had no idea what they did if you didn't report when you were supposed to: did they issue a warrant for the first offense?
For various reasons, I didn't want to leave the dogs alone. She got here and I headed out. There are two court complexes in Alamo, I went to the closest. There were hardly any cars there, so obviously I had gone to the wrong one. Still, I went in, and no one was in the lobby, but the door was not locked so that was a good sign. I apologized to the clerk, she said there had been no cases on the 1st, so no big deal. Anyway, I needed to go to the main court house at the other location, so back in the car and start driving again.
It wasn't remotely a straight path because they're building a dedicated left turn lane at the blind school where I used to work, and that's keeping that intersection screwed up for a year. I get around that, and eventually get to the right court house. Naturally, this one has proper security, which takes a bit to get through. I get there - before 5 pm - and find out everyone from jury services has gone home for the weekend.
Huh. Maybe calling when I figured out that I'd screwed up might have been a good idea.
NAH. Driving down in a rush and squirreling about was clearly much more sensible!
SO, I text my boss and tell her that I MIGHT be on jury duty Monday morning. Get up awfully bloody early, I'm at the court house before they open. The lobby is open, all the windows are closed. There's actually someone there before me: I think he's there to pay a fine or something, he goes to a different window when they open. I go to the jury pool window, guy takes my number and looks it up.
I had been excused. They either did not send the notice or it has not arrived in the mail yet.
Funny they didn't bother with this new-fangled invention they've got called E-MAIL.
Apparently my original response was good enough, and they didn't need the two letters from my doctor.
Ah, I didn't mention the second letter. When I have an appointment with my immunologist, I need bloodwork done. I have them mail it to me and I carry it to the lab, and they included another letter from my doc. So I had the PDF of the official 'get out of jury duty free for medical reasons' form plus this second letter on me when I went that Monday morning to find out my fate.
But the PDF by itself was problematic: while it had a very good response by the doctor: it had no other information! It didn't have my badge number, the summons number, court number, it didn't even have my name! And there were strict warnings that the form could not be altered, so I didn't want to make any changes to it by adding those pieces without someone from that department seeing me do it.
I found everything more than a bit stressful, and in the end, it was all meaningless as I had already been excused and didn't know it!
Jury Duty
Date: 2021-04-16 11:15 am (UTC)I have served once in Maine. HATED it. Two day trial. No food like what you experienced. It was an injury as the result of an auto accident lawsuit case. Neither side provided a completely convincing argument. Party being sued had admitted they were at fault. So we felt we had to allow for damages. But we also had a hard time trying to figure out what we should/could award, partially due to how poorly the party suing presented their case and partly because we were not given all the info we felt we needed in order to make a better decision. For example: Did the party at fault have insurance and did said insurance already pay for the injured party's medical bills. IE, if the bills have already been paid, can we ignore that portion of the claim? In the end we gave no more than the minimum allowed based on what little info we were provided as far as the costs that were incurred.
The whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth simply confirming how I've felt for years. The only true winners in our court system are the lawyers.
Re: Jury Duty
Date: 2021-04-16 07:36 pm (UTC)Oh, geez. Incompetent attorneys on both sides? That sucks. Yeah, it's usually the case that it's the lawyers who win.
Re: Jury Duty
Date: 2021-04-17 07:47 pm (UTC)Re: Jury Duty
Date: 2021-04-17 08:16 pm (UTC)When we were deliberating, seemed like every time we sent a question, the response was along the lines of 'I can't answer that, use your own best judgement.' Not being able to get a statement read back from the court recorder for clarity struck us as really weird! Wasn't that their job?!
Re: Jury Duty
Date: 2021-04-18 11:44 am (UTC)What's the point of telling the jury you can submit written questions during deliberations if you're not going to receive an answer.
Personally, the jury should be allowed to submit written questions during the trial.
Re: Jury Duty
Date: 2021-04-18 04:34 pm (UTC)Exactly! Passing notes to the judge should be allowed! "Tell the witness to speak up!" etc.