Juror Fired During 6-Month Trial
When Susie Brown of Seminole County, Florida was picked for jury duty, she felt that is was her civic duty to serve and did not try to wiggle out of it as a lot of people do. Perhaps if she had known that serving on the jury would ultimately cost her the job she loved, she might have gone the way of the masses and found a way not to serve on the jury.
Brown worked at Central Florida Regional Hospital when she was called to serve on a jury in an insurance fraud case. The case went on for six months and the hospital refused to wait for Brown. She says that they fired her because she was on jury duty.
She is now suing the hospital for firing her. The case that Brown served as a juror on was supposed to last for four months, but when it was extended to six months she informed her employer. Brown says that when she told the hospital that the case was going to last for six months instead of the expected four months, they terminated her employment.
Brown says she never would have imagined that the hospital would fire her for being on jury duty. She had worked at the Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford, Florida for 12 years. During her employment at the hospital she had been promoted from an X-ray tech to a supervisor and then became an administrator.
According to Brown, her boss was not happy that she was picked as a juror and that the trial was expected to last for four months. She says that he told her that she should have come to him and gotten him to write her a letter to get her out of serving on the jury.
Brown says that she did not try to get out of serving on the jury because it was her civic duty."I would not lie to a federal judge," she said.
When the judge in the case told the jurors that the trial would have to be extended for two additional months, Brown says that she was scared to tell her boss. A week after she told him that the trial had been extended, he had news for her. She was fired.
Under federal law, juror's jobs are protected while they serve. An employer may not terminate an employee because he or she is serving on a jury.
The hospital says that Brown was not fired because she had jury duty. They claim that her position was simply eliminated. Perhaps after covering her position for such a long time, they realized that having her there would be redundant.
Brown says that the judge in the case on which she served advised her that she should get a lawyer. She took his advice and now says that she wants to make sure that this situation does not happen to anyone else.
"I want people to go on jury duty and not fear losing their job," she said.
Brown is seeking an undisclosed amount of money in her lawsuit. Her lawyer says that it will probably be at least a year before the case goes to court.