What's a subpoena, anyway?

[Jimbo]

About six months back my wife was an eye witness to a car accident and thought she'd do her civic duty and hung (for an hour) around to tell the police officer what she saw. The same day she was contacted and got a tongue lashing by the guy who caused the accident. Then the lawyer for the person who was hit called and asked if she'd appear in court and she explained she suffers from anxiety attacks and would rather not, also that she can't tell anything more than what she said in the report. Just over a week ago she received a subpoena from the lawyer, whom she's tried repeatedly to contact him and he has not returned her calls. She's called the court and they didn't have any record of her being listed as a witness. The subpoena had the docket number typed wrong, it also said the driver of the car causing the accident was a woman when my wife is positive it was the man, (and this one's mine, instead of Esquire after the lawyer's name it was typed Equire (maybe that means he's a horse lawyer, I don't know). The subpoena says if you don't appear you will be subject to a fine or penalty. So how official are these things, anyway. Do we really have to go to night court tonight? Could we just say there were too many mistakes in the subpoena so we tossed it out? It's going to be cold and nasty out and I don't want to miss Deadliest Catch.