In California (or any state for that matter) can you demand an employee to postpone jury duty if the time they are requested to serve is in the middle of a critical event for the company?

We are having a national convention and one of our key note speakers for sales has been summoned for jury duty over this week.

No, you cannot demand the employee violate a call to jury duty. You, as the employer can REQUEST of the court to postpone the employee's jury duty to another date, but that is the judge's decision to make, not yours and not the employee's.

I will say, however, that many judges will not honor such requests as they get so many of them, they wouldn't have anybody but retired people and stay-at-home parents on juries.

I don't know about in your state since jury duty law varies from state to state.

In my state, YOU as the employer have no jurisdiction to demand anything about your employee's jury duty regardless of the reason. The employee, however, could request that his jury duty be rescheduled for any time within a one-year period (at least, it was a one-year period last time I was called for jury duty) and he doesn't even have to give a reason. BUT, whatever date he is reassigned to, is carved in stone.

Are we able to demand that the employee REQUEST the postponement? For whatever reason, the employee WANTS to go to jury duty rather than the conference. Given this, I'm not sure if we're judging the value of his speaking as well as originally thought, but still, it would be best for him to be there.

You'll do better waiting for Michael on that one. As I said, the laws regarding jury duty vary from state to state. I can answer for my own state, but the only thing I can tell you about jury duty law in any other state is whether you as the employer need to pay the employee while on jury duty. Sorry I can't be of more help.

I'm not sure there's anything illegal about it, but it just hits me the wrong way. The employee has been called. In my state, the employer can request the jury duty of an employee be postponed; it may not be that way in all states.

The issue is, what would you do if this employee refuses your "demand"? Fire him/her? I would see a lawsuit coming with that; i.e. "I was fired because my employer wanted me to not fulfill my jury duty requirement and I refused to comply."

Most of you intuition on this is correct. Cal. Labor Code 230 provides:

"230. (a) An employer may not discharge or in any manner discriminate against an employee for taking time off to serve as required by law on an inquest jury or trial jury, if the employee,prior to taking the time off, gives reasonable notice to the employer that he or she is required to serve."

Generally, if the employee requests a deferrment, it will be granted. However, the case here seems to be that the employee does not wish to ask for a deferment. As such, there is little that you can do.

A friend's father is a superior court judge and some time ago I had a conflict like this and he told me that if I called the court, many times they would allow one to come in prior to the date on the summons. It's worth a phone call.