Insurance for jury service

blueolive

Does anyone on here have experience of jury service insurance please? I've been called and have deferred until October but I work for myself and have really suffered financially over the last year so I can't face the thought of losing a load of income over it. Plus I don't know if I can get insurance if I already know I'm due to do it. There's no mention of it in my home cover so I'd have to get a separate policy or get a home policy that includes it when I renew in July.

Sandtree

As you say you already know you are called so it is too late for trying to put something into place now as insurance is about covering the random not the known - though that isnt to say some policy may have poor wording that allows a claim but double check how they respond to self employed people!

Jury service: What you can claim if you’re self-employed - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) gives what you can claim as a self employed person from the public purse.

Depending on what you do for a living its possible you can "work from home" from the court when not actively doing anything - from the few I've known to do jury service there is a lot of waiting around  and none have had to do the full 10 days let alone be pulled into a longer trial (though clearly some are unlucky and do)

davidmcn

Like any other sort of insurance, I can't see you've got a chance of obtaining it if you already know you want to make a claim.

rs65

Last time I was called, the court excused anyone who was self employed

Aretnap

My experience of jury service was a fair few years ago but it consisted of:

Monday: not needed, sent home half an hour after arriving at court
Tuesday and Wednesday: actual trial
Wednesday afternoon: trial finished, sent home, that was that. 

So there's a good chance that you will not be tied up for anything like the full 10 days. Still not ideal in terms of being able to plan your working patterns as you won't know until you get there, but depending on what you do perhaps you could save up some jobs that you can do at short notice, or some routine admin tasks to do as and when you can while nominally on jury service? 

Can't help with the insurance aspect except to say again that insurance is intended to cover things that you're worried might happen, not things that you know will happen, so your chances of finding a policy that would cover you for this known event are slim. 

olgadapolga

rs65 said:

Last time I was called, the court excused anyone who was self employed

Same thing happened with my DH.

[Deleted User]

Aretnap said:

My experience of jury service was a fair few years ago but it consisted of:

Monday: not needed, sent home half an hour after arriving at court
Tuesday and Wednesday: actual trial
Wednesday afternoon: trial finished, sent home, that was that. 

So there's a good chance that you will not be tied up for anything like the full 10 days. Still not ideal in terms of being able to plan your working patterns as you won't know until you get there, but depending on what you do perhaps you could save up some jobs that you can do at short notice, or some routine admin tasks to do as and when you can while nominally on jury service? 

Can't help with the insurance aspect except to say again that insurance is intended to cover things that you're worried might happen, not things that you know will happen, so your chances of finding a policy that would cover you for this known event are slim. 

As an anecdote, a colleague in a job long ago had a serious case, and, barring days when they were not needed, it took at least 2 weeks

OP the details of claiming expenses as self employed are on the gov site - £64.95 max a day for loss of earnings and £5.71 (up to 10 hours a day) for food and drink + travel costs

As a silly aside (obviously not something to actually do) I always joked that the best way to get out of it was to turn up and say you're prejudiced against everyone to try and avoid being selected. Make up some freeman of the land nonsense like claim it's a maritime court and you're all passengers in the ship and you only recognise common law and maybe that will work.

Retiredwelshman

I did jury service last year - retired so no income loss for me - but before the case started you get a list of defendants and witnesses - if you know any of them or just think you know the names you will not be chosen and you would be disqualified for the first trial.
Depending on the length of the trial you could find yourself in court for only a couple of days out of the fortnight you are normally expected to serve.

blueolive

Thank you so much everyone for the comments - really helpful and I'm reassured. I did jury service in 2012 and never even got inside the courtroom the whole 10 days but they kept me sitting there nevertheless and I wasn't allowed to use a computer etc. Maybe things are a bit more realistic these days. The internet is essential for my work so I will look into whether they allow that, and also the thing about self-employed people being excused! Thanks everyone!

Retiredwelshman

blueolive said:

Thank you so much everyone for the comments - really helpful and I'm reassured. I did jury service in 2012 and never even got inside the courtroom the whole 10 days but they kept me sitting there nevertheless and I wasn't allowed to use a computer etc. Maybe things are a bit more realistic these days. The internet is essential for my work so I will look into whether they allow that, and also the thing about self-employed people being excused! Thanks everyone!

Here in Wales we were allowed to bring in a laptop for personal use. (You could not of course use it to google anybody involved in the case). Even used their free wifi.