Do You Have to Go to Court If You Are Subpoenaed?

If you’ve been subpoenaed, yes, you generally have to go to court. A subpoena is a court order, and in nearly every situation you are legally required to comply. Ignoring one can result in fines, arrest, or up to 18 months of confinement under federal law.¹ You do have ways to challenge or narrow a subpoena before the compliance date, but simply not showing up is not one of them.

Read the Subpoena Before You Do Anything Else

Not every subpoena requires you to appear in person. A testimony subpoena (formally, a subpoena ad testificandum) orders you to appear and answer questions under oath at a trial, hearing, or deposition. A document subpoena (a subpoena duces tecum) orders you to hand over specified records, files, or other tangible evidence.² You can receive both at once.

The distinction matters. If the subpoena only requires you to produce documents and doesn’t separately command your appearance for testimony, you generally don’t need to show up in person. You turn over the records and that satisfies your obligation.²

A deposition subpoena is its own variant. It commands you to appear for sworn questioning outside the courtroom, often at a lawyer’s office, and it must state how the testimony will be recorded.² Depositions feel less formal than trial, but your testimony carries the same legal weight.

Read the document carefully. It should tell you which type it is, when and where you’re expected, and what (if anything) you need to bring.

When You May Not Have to Appear

A subpoena is only enforceable if it was properly issued and delivered. A few situations can excuse your appearance, or at least give you leverage to fight it.

Improper Service

Under federal rules, someone who is at least 18 years old and not a party to the case must personally deliver a copy of the subpoena to you. If the subpoena requires your physical attendance, the server must also hand you one day’s witness attendance fee and mileage at the time of service. That payment requirement is waived only when the subpoena is issued on behalf of the federal government.²

A subpoena left on your doorstep by someone involved in the lawsuit, or one served without the required witness fee, may not be enforceable. Don’t rely on a technicality without confirming it with a lawyer, though. Courts have discretion to overlook minor service defects.

The 100-Mile Rule

Federal rules limit how far you can be dragged to testify. A subpoena can generally compel your attendance only within 100 miles of where you live, work, or regularly conduct business in person.² If the courthouse is 200 miles from your home and you’re not a party to the case, you have strong grounds to challenge the subpoena.

Exceptions apply. Parties to a lawsuit and officers of a party can be ordered to appear anywhere in the state where they reside, work, or do business. A non-party can also be required to travel beyond 100 miles for trial (but not for a deposition) if they won’t incur substantial expense getting there.² Criminal cases are different: a subpoena in a federal criminal case can be served anywhere in the United States, with no 100-mile cap.³

How to Push Back the Right Way

You don’t have to accept every subpoena exactly as written, but you have to object through the proper channel and on time.

For a document subpoena you believe is overly broad or seeks protected information, you can serve written objections on the requesting party. Those objections must be filed before the compliance deadline or within 14 days of service, whichever comes first.² Missing that window weakens your position significantly.

The formal mechanism for fighting a subpoena is a motion to quash (cancel entirely) or modify (narrow the scope). A court is required to quash a subpoena that:

Doesn’t allow a reasonable time to comply
Requires a non-party to travel more than 100 miles, with limited exceptions
Demands information protected by a recognized privilege with no applicable waiver
Imposes an undue burden — the cost, disruption, or effort of compliance is disproportionate to the value of the evidence

Courts may also quash or modify subpoenas that seek trade secrets, confidential commercial information, or opinions from experts who weren’t hired by either party.² In those cases, the party that issued the subpoena can still get the material by demonstrating substantial need and agreeing to compensate you reasonably. If a subpoena demands records containing trade secrets or proprietary data, you can also ask the court for a protective order limiting how the information is shared.

File your motion before the compliance date. Courts have little patience for objections raised after the deadline has already passed. If the timeline is tight, contact the issuing attorney directly. Many subpoena disputes get resolved through informal negotiation before anyone files anything.

What You Can Refuse to Answer Once You’re There

Showing up is required. That doesn’t mean you have to answer every question or hand over every document. Several categories of information are shielded from compelled disclosure:

Attorney-client privilege covers confidential communications between you and your lawyer made for the purpose of getting legal advice. The privilege belongs to the client, and only the client can waive it.
Work product doctrine protects documents and materials prepared by an attorney (or at their direction) in anticipation of litigation. The opposing side can overcome this only by showing substantial need and an inability to get equivalent materials any other way, and even then the court must shield an attorney’s mental impressions and legal theories.⁴
Spousal privilege, in many contexts, means you cannot be forced to testify about confidential communications with your spouse.
Reporter’s privilege is recognized in many jurisdictions to protect journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources, though the scope varies widely.

Privilege doesn’t apply automatically. You have to assert it, either through written objections for a document subpoena or on a question-by-question basis during testimony. Staying silent without invoking the privilege can be treated as waiver.

The Fifth Amendment Doesn’t Excuse Your Appearance

This trips people up. The Fifth Amendment protects you from being “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against” yourself.⁵ It is a powerful right, but it does not let you skip the hearing. If you’re subpoenaed, you must show up. You invoke the Fifth in response to specific questions whose answers might expose you to criminal prosecution, and the judge then decides whether the privilege applies.

You cannot invoke the Fifth preemptively from your couch. A witness who simply fails to appear will face contempt proceedings regardless of whether they had valid self-incrimination concerns. Show up, invoke the privilege properly, and let the court sort it out. The Fifth also only covers criminal exposure. You can’t use it to avoid testimony that would embarrass you, cost you money in a civil case, or damage a business relationship.

Grand jury subpoenas follow the same rule and are stricter still. Even if you intend to invoke the Fifth in response to every question, you still have to appear in person. A witness who has been granted immunity and refuses to testify faces confinement for up to 18 months or the remaining term of the grand jury, whichever is shorter.¹

What Happens if You Ignore a Subpoena

Federal courts have broad authority to punish disobedience of any court order, including a subpoena, with fines, imprisonment, or both.⁶ The court can also issue a bench warrant for your arrest if you fail to appear after being served.

Consequences fall into two categories. Civil contempt is designed to coerce compliance: the court imposes escalating penalties, often daily fines or jail, that continue until you do what the subpoena requires. The old saying is that a civil contemnor carries the keys to their prison in their own pocket. Criminal contempt punishes the act of disobedience itself, and complying afterward doesn’t undo the penalty.

People often assume that because the underlying dispute is civil, the consequences for ignoring the subpoena will also be mild. That assumption is wrong. Contempt charges carry criminal-level consequences regardless of the type of case that produced the subpoena. For witnesses who refuse to testify or produce evidence in a federal proceeding, the recalcitrant witness statute allows confinement of up to 18 months.¹ The confined witness can end the confinement at any time by cooperating, but federal judges are more willing to enforce this provision than most people expect.

What You’re Owed for Showing Up

If you’re subpoenaed to testify in federal court, you’re entitled to a witness attendance fee of $40 per day.⁷ Travel reimbursement for driving your own vehicle is $0.725 per mile as of 2026.⁸ Those amounts won’t replace a day of lost wages, but they’re what federal law provides.

The party that subpoenas you is supposed to hand over one day’s attendance fee and mileage at the time of service, unless the subpoena was issued by the federal government.² If you weren’t tendered those fees, that’s a potential basis for challenging the subpoena’s enforceability. State courts set their own witness fee schedules, and the amounts vary widely, so check your state’s statute if you’ve been subpoenaed to state court.

When to Get a Lawyer

A straightforward testimony subpoena in someone else’s civil case usually doesn’t require hiring an attorney. You show up, answer truthfully, and go home. Some subpoenas create real legal exposure, though, and handling them alone is a mistake. Get legal help if:

The subpoena seeks documents that may be privileged or contain trade secrets
Your testimony could expose you to criminal liability
The subpoena is unreasonably broad, demanding enormous volumes of records or requiring travel that would cause genuine hardship
You’ve received a grand jury subpoena
You’re a target or subject of a criminal investigation

An attorney can file a motion to quash, negotiate narrower terms with opposing counsel, or advise you on invoking privileges during testimony. If contempt proceedings have already begun, legal representation isn’t optional. You need someone who understands the distinction between civil and criminal contempt and can argue that your noncompliance was justified or that the penalty is disproportionate.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1826 – Recalcitrant Witnesses
2
Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena
3
Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 17 – Subpoena
4
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26
5
Library of Congress. U.S. Constitution – Fifth Amendment
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 401 – Power of Court
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1821 – Per Diem and Mileage Generally; Subsistence
8
U.S. General Services Administration. Privately Owned Vehicle (POV) Mileage Reimbursement Rates