Timer Event never Fires

We are having a very strange issue where a timer event never fires. The time event is of type date and the date passed is in the past so the time should fire immediately. However, if we look at the Job History table the timer event shows retries 3 and the task is not suspended. It seems like the job executor simply does not return this event for processing. Any one with a similar problem?

Could you please place a link to the docs that states that this would be the expected behaviour?