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What Is a DUI Calendar Call?

What Is a DUI Calendar Call?

A DUI calendar call is an administrative discussion between the judge and all parties regarding the scheduling of trials and pre-trial hearings. The facts of your case are not presented and no witnesses or other evidence are typically presented at these hearings. However, if the court requires your presence in court, you will be required to sit through the proceedings while the prosecutor, the judge and all the lawyers representing various parties discuss the upcoming court schedule.

Finally, assuming that no resolution of your case through negotiations with the prosecutor or pre-trial motions is possible, trial is the next step in the court process. Surprisingly, your attorney may not know a precise date that your trial will start, due to the court trying to schedule as many cases as time will allow during a given court term.

It is not uncommon for ten or twenty trials to be scheduled for a one-week period, with all parties fully understanding that some of these trials will not occur. As the trial date approaches, some charges are dropped or reduced for some criminal defendants by the prosecutor at the last second. Other defendants decide to plead guilty or nolo contendere and forego a trial. Occasionally, some of the lawyers or their witnesses may have other trials that conflict with your case’s trial date.

For example, if you are scheduled to be the eighth case called to trial in a week, you could actually be the first trial on the first day of the trial week. In the alternative, your case might not start at all until the next available trial week, if an earlier case or cases use all of the available time.

You must be ready to proceed to trial at any time your case is scheduled for one of these trial weeks. Your attorney and all of your witnesses must also be ready to proceed, and often with very short notice. This means that you must be flexible and make yourself available to be present in court if your lawyer calls. For some types of employment, this is a task that is either impossible or extremely difficult. If you reside out of state when trial occurs, scheduling flights and time off from work can be very taxing.

Even more inconvenient to you, if your trial does not occur at all during the week when first scheduled, you will have been “on call” all week long. Employers do not understand or work well with such tentative scheduling of mandatory legal matters. Please understand that other than making the trial judge aware of the job difficulties that you are facing, your DUI-DWI attorney may have little control or authority to demand any accommodation of your work schedule or your need to come to court from another state.

Considering all of the above, it is possible that you will need to be able to take off a cumulative total of up to two weeks from work during the year after your arrest. Some matters can be handled without you being present at court. Other matters can be set for a fixed date as much as a month or two in advance. Others can be limited to a given week, but you and your attorney are not assured of being reached on the calendar on a given day.

For most people, this means possibly giving up your entire paid vacation time for the year. If given the choice between having to take unpaid vacation days off from work and using your paid days, considering the expenses you face, it may be better for you to forego other vacation and use your paid “leave” days to resolve your legal problems.

You do not have to appear in person at your DUI calendar call. One of our tenacious DUI lawyers will handle this proceeding for you. Stay home or at work and we will be back in touch with you after court ends.