Missing a court date is bad.  Worse is having your computer e-mail system make you miss the date, and having the judge hold a hearing at which you have to produce your IT guy, all to explain how it happened.

Here is a Washington Post article telling how it all went bad.

"The trouble at Franklin D. Azar & Associates PC began with pornographic spam.
Last May the Aurora, Colorado, law firm was being bombarded with offensive messages, and enough of it was seeping through the company’s spam filters that employees complained to management, and IT administrator Kevin Rea was told to do something. 

What happened next, as detailed in federal court filings, shows how the fight against spammers can backfire. Spammers have been using increasingly sophisticated techniques to evade filters, so that over the past few years and despite predictions to the contrary, unsolicited e-mail continues to plague businesses worldwide.

On the morning of May 21, Rea dialed up the spam settings on the Barracuda Spam Firewall 200 Azar & Associates was using to block unwanted mail. The changes made it harder for spam to land on the desktops of company employees but they also had one unforeseen consequence: the Barracuda Networks Inc. appliance began blocking e-mail from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, including a notice advising company lawyers of a May 30 hearing in a civil lawsuit.

Azar & Associates lawyers blew their court date and this week the judge overseeing the matter ordered the company to pay attorney fees and expenses incurred by the lawyers who showed up representing the other side of the case. Rea did not return a call seeking comment on the matter. "