An employee called for jury duty during an emotionally taxing murder trial could still have come to work well-rested on weekends, a court has been told.
A vintage clothing shop in Sydney's inner-west has been hit with two charges for allegedly threatening the woman after she did not come in for work on Saturdays and Sundays during the eight-week trial.
The employee, who cannot be legally identified, had been rostered on to work three out of every four weekends when she was summonsed to the NSW Supreme Court from February to April 2023.
Despite the trial judge issuing two letters stating the woman was to rest over the weekend, the store's boss still emailed her in early-March to say she had breached company policy by failing to fulfil her ordinary hours.
In April, after the employee returned to work, she was handed a letter informing her of an upcoming disciplinary hearing, where she faced either warning or termination.
The woman decided to resign after that, previously telling the court she felt she was being unfairly punished.
The parties returned to Downing Centre Local Court on Wednesday, when the store's barrister Geoff Diggins denied any threats had been made.
The company merely reserved the right to take action, which did not mean it actually intended to do so, Magistrate Scott Nash was told.
“It doesn't even make the general notion of a threat, let alone a specific threat," Mr Diggins said.
Even if there was a threat, it did not have anything to do with the employee's jury obligations, because she was not required to attend court on weekends, the barrister added.
Under employment law, while workers could take time off for community service such as jury duty or volunteer firefighting, there was no legal requirement for them to have equivalent time off afterwards, the court heard.
The juror would have left court at 4pm on a Friday and been scheduled to work at 10am on Saturday, which qualified under law as adequate time for rest, he said.
"I’m not suggesting it's a particularly generous entitlement, but that’s a debate for elsewhere," he said.
The woman was young and healthy, and switching from a jury box in a murder trial to dealing with customers in a store would have been "a complete change in mental scenery", Mr Diggins said.
But prosecutor David Kell SC said the narrow interpretation of the law argued by defence would make the Jury Act lose its protective function.
The alleged threats were at least implied and would have been noted by a reasonable person reading the email and letter from the store, he said.
“A pithy implied threat is nonetheless a threat,” he said.
The only reason for the woman refusing to work on weekends was because she was mentally exhausted from being on a jury, Dr Kell said.
The alleged threats were a direct result of that and could be prosecuted criminally, he added.
Mr Nash will deliver his decision on August 27.
