Many Pay for Doing Civic Duty

The juror had nothing against doing his civic duty. But he hadn’t planned on digging into his own pocket to pay for it.

The Delta Air Lines worker had hit the company’s limit for paid jury leave after 15 days on the Rampart police corruption trial. But the case would take two weeks more.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor felt she could not let the juror go in mid-trial. Connor phoned Delta repeatedly to plead for more paid days off.

The airline ultimately refused, Connor recalled, and the juror used his vacation days to cover his time off work.

“The employee just ate it, just ate it!” Connor said. “He was very frustrated.”

While a Delta spokeswoman said she could not comment on the juror without more information--Connor declined to disclose the worker’s name--Los Angeles judges say that such stories of unpaid leave are becoming more common.

Those in the business community say employers have become less willing to pay for jury service because of pressures to lower costs, especially as the economy has slowed. This comes as California courts have shown an increasing unwillingness to excuse jurors who claim financial hardship.

Under California law, employers have “no obligation to supply jury pay at all,” said Julianne Broyles, a lobbyist for the California Chamber of Commerce. But most businesses try to support jury duty, even in these tight times, she said. California law does prohibit employers from firing workers for serving on juries.

An employer’s jury pay policy sometimes has nothing to do with its size, profitability or type of industry, according to a confidential Superior Court report obtained by The Times. The report lists the jury pay policies of more than 1,000 employers in the Los Angeles area.

Though many employers confirmed their policies for The Times, most were reluctant to discuss them further.

Financial support by major private employers for jury duty has dropped over the years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1986, 93% of medium and large private sector firms offered employees paid time off for jury duty, but in 1997, the most recent year for which nationwide statistics are available, 87% did.

In Los Angeles County, about 22% of employers reported offering unlimited paid jury leave last year, down from 27% in 1995, according to the juror services division of Los Angeles County Superior Court. Over the same period, the number of employers paying workers nothing increased from 2.3% to 13.5%.

“So many companies that could aren’t paying anything at all. There’s something wrong,” said Van Nuys Superior Court Judge John Fisher.

Fisher, who has presided over many long trials, said he has, “on occasion, called up and begged” employers to give workers more paid time off. Other than the $15-a-day fee provided by the state after the second day of jury duty, a worker who doesn’t receive paid time off may simply be out of luck.

Several states--including Colorado, Connecticut and Tennessee--require employers to compensate workers in some form for jury duty. At least two states--Nebraska and Alabama--require many employers to provide unlimited jury benefits. In Massachusetts, employers that fail to compensate a worker for jury duty may be liable for three times the withheld wages.

In recent years, the Judicial Council--the policymaking arm of the California Supreme Court--urged state legislators to give tax credits to employers offering paid jury leave, but those proposals never got off the ground, said spokeswoman Lynn Holton.

This month, Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky asked for a study of a proposal requiring county contractors to pay their employees “reasonable jury benefits.”

James Bascue, presiding judge of Los Angeles County Superior Court, said the court--the largest in the nation--is considering a similar requirement for its contractors.

“It’s shocking that some of the largest users of the court . . . are so miserly,” Bascue said. “The very businesses and law firms benefiting from [court programs], they’re cutting back and making it more difficult for us. We’re of great concern about this.”

The court also has moved recently to make jury service more palatable. The new “one-day, one-trial” program, now in effect in many courthouses across Los Angeles County, allows jurors to complete their duty in a single day, if they are not assigned to a trial that takes longer. Jurors previously were called for 10 days.

Because of the program, the Los Angeles County Superior Court now needs three times as many jurors and judges are less likely to excuse jurors who plead financial hardship.

Jury pay policies vary widely among employers, according to the Superior Court report.

Nabisco Holding Corp. allows unlimited jury leave, but fellow food giant Nestle USA offers only 10 days. Calls to Nestle seeking comment were not returned.

While the law firms O’Melveny & Myers and Morrison & Foerster both provide unlimited paid leave for jury service, lawyers, paralegals and secretaries at Irell & Manella get 30 days paid, and the firm said it won’t pay any more after that. Employees at Munger, Tolles & Olson and at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton receive 10 paid days for jury duty.

These firms rank in the Top 10 of Los Angeles County’s largest law firms this year, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal. Each has more than 100 attorneys in its local offices and touts litigation as a specialty.

Bascue said 10 days of paid jury leave “is a lot better than what some of the others are doing.” But he added that it should be the minimum provided by employers, and many--especially law firms--could do much better.

“A lot of these large law firms try cases that last longer than 10 days. They can go months and months,” Bascue said. In his view, a “reasonable” paid jury leave policy for law firms and large companies would be at least 30 days. “Our preference would be unlimited,” he said.

Munger Tolles did not return calls for comment on its jury pay policy. Bob Zuber, executive director of Sheppard Mullin, declined to comment.

According to the report, Ampco System Parking, a major operator of parking lots that employs 8,800 workers nationwide, offers no paid jury leave. Ampco workers are encouraged to step up to their civic duty--but on their own time and dime, an employee said.

Ampco management did not return calls seeking comment.

Some nonprofit organizations also refuse to pay for jury duty. Among them is Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, with more than 3,100 employees. But Children Now, a nonprofit advocacy group with 35 employees statewide and two in its Los Angeles office, provides 10 days of paid jury leave.

Childrens Hospital spokesman Steve Rutledge said he hasn’t heard any employee complaints about unpaid jury duty, but otherwise declined to comment.

Daily Variety, the entertainment industry trade newspaper, offers its 175 employees unlimited paid jury leave. The 6,000-employee Los Angeles Times offers 10 days paid jury leave for its full-time employees. Asked whether that was sufficient, Times spokesman David Garcia said, “The policy is pretty clear and speaks for itself.”

American Airlines, Continental Airlines and United Airlines offer their workers unlimited paid jury leave.

Delta spokeswoman Peggy Estes said that in general, her company tries to be flexible with employees who exceed the 15-day limit. Delta believes its policy is “competitive with other companies” in California, Estes said.

Jury pay policies are “not as liberal” as they once were, said Cynthia Elkins Hogan, an Encino-based employment lawyer who advises small and medium-sized companies throughout Los Angeles County. “It’s a tight economy.”

Many of her clients have either trimmed jury pay to one week or eliminated it, Hogan said.

Tom Munsterman, director of the Center for Jury Studies at the National Center for State Courts, calls employers who don’t pay for jury duty “free riders” who are taking advantage of the system at the expense of those contributing more.

“Shame on them,” Munsterman said.

Jack Walker, chairman of the government affairs committee of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said the lack of employer support for jury duty could be due to lingering misperceptions that the system is inefficient--even though the “one trial” program has vastly reduced employee time off work. The chamber has joined Los Angeles judges in lobbying employers to be more generous with jury pay.

Employer unwillingness to pay is “really creating a hardship,” Bascue said. “The one who’s getting hurt in this is the employee.”