Good Service of Process

In reality, foreclosure starts when the complaint is filed against the homeowner. Then service of process happens, informing Joe Homeowner that a lawsuit is filed against him and with a summons to reply.

If you know a process server is coming after you, do not hide. Process servers will find a way to find you, which may not be convenient to your schedule or dignity. Foreclosures rarely happen at opportune times, but you can control having papers served to you at your home as opposed to while you are out shopping.

Service of process does start the clock, but it is okay for the clock to start. The court needs to get jurisdiction over the dispute and the human. That human is the homeowner. Our justice system is big on notice and opportunity to be heard. Service of process gives the homeowner notice and an invitation to answer.

For the standard complaint or lawsuit, the defendant has twenty calendar days to answer the summons. That is more time than you need to panic, but a reasonable period in which to get legal advice.

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Procecss Server Punched by a Cop - Case Dismissed

The case against a Buffalo police officer accused of punching a process server last October was adjourned in contemplation of dismissal without conditions prior to a scheduled trial Thursday in Lancaster Town Court.

Ann Vanyo, 37, faced a violation harassment count in the alleged attack Oct. 20, when she was served court papers by Raymond Lewandowski. Lewandowski filed a police complaint against Vanyo, alleging she chased him and punched him after he served the papers on her in Lancaster.

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La Salle County Expects Six Figures From New Process Server Program

A plan to assign one deputy strictly to process warrants as a means of increasing the county’s revenue stream appears ready for full board action.
Finance committee members on Tuesday approved of hiring a new correctional officer so that a sheriff’s deputy can dedicate his entire work week serving civil and criminal warrants. The county will fill the open deputy position with a correctional officer, and hire a new person to fill the resulting correctional officer vacancy.


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Metro Police Adopt Electronic Subpoena System

After years of inaction, Louisville Metro Government has signed a $454,000 contract to adopt an electronic subpoena system to replace the county's cumbersome system of hand-delivering papers and help make sure officers show up for court.

“Everybody's going to benefit from this,” especially police, said Bruce McMichael of the Louisville Metro Criminal Justice Commission.

Metro Police Lt. Col. Vince Robison, responsible for overseeing court attendance, said the department is “very optimistic this will help us eliminate” the problem of officers missing court.

In recent years, an estimated 10 percent of the approximately 100,000 paper subpoenas issued annually to Louisville police never reached the officers, according to department officials. They and others cite the process as one reason why officers miss court.

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Fla. Man Sued For $15K Over Negative eBay Remark

Can posting your opinion on eBay cost you in real life?

So far Michael Steadman has spent $7,000 for his, and he isn't yet done defending himself in a $15,000 defamation lawsuit brought by the man who sold him a reportedly defective time clock.

Steadman bought the clock for $44 in 2008, and said it arrived in three pieces that didn't fit together or even seem to be the same model. He got a refund through PayPal's buyer protection plan and sent the merchandise back, but wanted other potential buyers to beware.

So on the profile of emiller1313, he wrote: "Bad seller; he has the ethics of a used car salesman."

Steadman thought that was the end of it until a process server arrived with a court summons.

It turned out that emiller1313 was a Miami Beach lawyer, and he wanted damages for ruining his 100 percent customer approval rating and "commercial reputation."

"The laws don't work for us. Because I don't have the money to fight them, I'm losing," Steadman said. "It's not right. I'm speechless."

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Process server firm fined, ceases operations

A Brockport process server company has been shut down and ordered to pay $10,000 in fines, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday.

We Serve It For You Process Service Agency LLC has agreed to cease operations and cooperate with ongoing investigations, Cuomo’s office said in a statement.

The business and its owners must also pay fees, costs and penalties totaling $10,000, and employee John Coy must surrender his notary public commission, the statement said.

The firm is operated by Coy, Joanne Marie Coy, Theresa Buehler and Wesley Converse, the statement said.

The company repeatedly claimed in legal affidavits that its employees made proper service of legal documents to thousands of consumers when, in fact, it had not, the statement said.

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Police: Legal Runner Returned to Home, Shot Husband and Wife

A man who worked for a legal runner firm serving civil papers is facing murder, kidnapping and robbery charges after a husband and wife he served papers on were attacked last month in their Las Vegas home.

Gregory L. Hover, 38, was arrested Saturday in connection with the shootings of Roberta and Julio Romero. Julio Romero was shot dead in his home in southwestern Las Vegas in the early morning hours of Jan. 25. His wife, Roberta, was shot in the face, but survived.

A criminal complaint was filed today charging Hover with first-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping, each count with a deadly weapon; two counts of robbery with use of a deadly weapon; two counts of burglary, with one burglary count enhanced with use of a deadly weapon; attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon; and one count of coercion with use of a deadly weapon.

According to an arrest report, Hover first made contact with the Romeros when he came to their home, near the intersection of Jones Boulevard and Russell Road, on Jan. 24 in search of a person named Santiago Pozzi. Pozzi, a friend of the Romeros, owed $10,000, Hover said, telling the couple he had legal papers he needed to serve on Pozzi, the report indicated.

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Serial Suer Drops All Lawsuits

Erik Estavillo has a long record of litigation against a number of large gaming corporations and celebrities for reasons some might call "frivolous". In July, he sued Sony for banning his PlayStation Network account, which he relied on for socialization due to suffering from agoraphobia, a fear of crowds. In November, he sued Microsoft after his Xbox 360 suffered the infamous "red ring of death," as well as Nintendo for a recent update that disabled a homebrew Wii Channel that he used to unlock characters in Mario Kart Wii.

The suits failed to take into account niggling details such as the fact that Estavillo was banned for behavior, the "red ring of death" is fixable at no cost to the consumer, and there were a number of updates available to re-enable his homebrew channel, but Estavillo has never shown much interest in the details of his case. Furthermore, many of his cases were outright dismissed, though until now that hadn't stopped him from trying.

In his decision to drop the cases, he cited the stress of the long wait for his cases to resolve, which in turn led to his doctor advising he walk away. Estavillo also cited panic disorder and Crohn's disease as health issues keeping him from following the lawsuits to completion. Also, a number of changes were made that apparently appeased Estavillo.

The fact that he couldn't afford the process server fees to serve people like Bill Gates and Winona Rider probably helped the decision along as well. Estavillo has since dropped off the map: All his sites and blogs have been obliterated from the internet. Whether we've truly heard the last of this man remains to be seen.

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Bomb Squad Sent to Sandhill Road Property

A routine delivery of eviction papers became more exciting for Sangamon County process servers Friday afternoon when an explosive device was found on the property.

The incident happened about noon at a home in the 2300 block of Sandhill Road. Sangamon County process servers went to the home to serve eviction paperwork. They arrived to find numerous vehicles on the property, so they summoned an Illinois Secretary of State officer there to investigate whether the vehicles were legal.

Police discovered what apparently was a blasting cap shoved into a flare. Sandhill Road was closed down, and members of the Secretary of State bomb squad was sent to the property to investigate further.

The Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office said the blasting cap was considered a “valid explosive device.” The bomb squad retrieved it, and charges are pending, they said.

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Process Server Admits Fraud

A Long Island-based process server who was accused of leaving thousands of New Yorkers unaware that they had been sued for unpaid debts, subjecting many of them to surprise judgments, liens and wage garnishments, has pleaded guilty to fraud.

William Singler, owner of American Legal Process, entered the plea Friday in Nassau County Supreme Court, admitting to one count of a class E felony. He is to be sentenced March 24 and still faces a civil suit in which New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is seeking damages and penalties.

In a statement announcing the guilty plea Friday, Cuomo said that ALP employees had not served properly, or at all, thousands of notices attorneys and creditors had paid them to serve.

When the uninformed defendants did not respond to the undelivered notices, an estimated 100,000 default judgments were entered in courts across the state. Some 4,800 of those judgments were filed in Erie County, and 2,700 in Niagara County.

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Process Server Says Man Assaulted Her At His Bremerton Home

A 41-year-old Spanaway woman said she was assaulted Monday by a man at a Bremerton home where she was trying to serve papers.

The woman, who owns a legal process-serving company, told Kitsap County sheriff?s deputies that she knocked at the home on the 800 block of NE Michelle Court and identified herself. The 28-year-old man who answered the door said that the recipient was not there.

The woman tried to hand the paperwork to the man, but he refused to take it.

The process server said she set the papers on the doorstep and told the man that they were his now. She turned to go back to her car, but the man followed, trying to give the papers back to her. He continued to insist she take them as she tried to get in the car, and, according to the woman, he pushed her twice.

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Unwed parents difficult to track

A car is in the driveway, but that might not mean much.

Penny Huston knocks on the door and hopes that the person who answers matches the name on the court document in her hand.

Nope.

"She says he doesn't live here anymore," Huston said. "It goes this way a lot."

At least a hundred times a week, the process server for Subpoena Service Plus parks outside a house or taps a car window or maybe even pretends to deliver flowers -- whatever it takes to serve the court papers seeking support for a child.

The job gets tougher as relationships between parents grow ever more tenuous: Sixty percent of the cases the Franklin County Child Support Enforcement Agency handles involve mothers and fathers who didn't marry in the first place.

"There may be no bond at all," agency Director Susan Brown said. "It's challenging."

The march away from matrimony -- about 40 percent of babies in the U.S. are born to single women -- also has made things hard for the legal system.

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Old Dominion University Served Papers

Old Dominion University has been served legal papers in a criminal investigation of the school's aborted $40,000-a-year contract with state Del. Phil Hamilton.
That acknowledgment came from ODU this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Virginian-Pilot.
The university said it has received three documents related to the Hamilton matter but declined to identify them in detail or provide copies. Two are being withheld because they relate to a criminal investigation and the third pursuant to a court order prohibiting its disclosure.

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Bill Regarding Service of Process

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D) of Rhode Island has introduced a bill that would require foreign companies that import goods into the United States to designate registered agents in the U.S. that are authorized to accept service of process on behalf of the manufacturer.

Read the text of the bill here.

Process Server On Trial for Allegedly Impersonating Cop

A Madison County judge is deciding whether a private detective went too far by identifying himself as a police detective.

Circuit Judge Richard Tognarelli heard the last testimony and closing arguments today of a bench trial for 27-year-old Dustin Dahmer. He is accused of identifying himself as a police detective while he was working for Kelllerman Investigations in Glen Carbon, a private detective agency that also serves court summonses on people.

Dahmer, of Bunker Hill, is accused of identifying himself as a Madison County sheriff's detective in May 2007: once by phone to a Godfrey woman and once in person to a man at his South Roxana home. Both times, Dahmer was trying to find someone who was to be served with court papers.

Read more at bnd.com.

Process Server on Chief Justice: "Definitely a Gentleman"

There was no clandestine surveillance, no hiding behind bushes or in a parked car.

Daniel Portnoy says he walked up the driveway and knocked on the front door. The homeowner opened the door.

Portnoy and the man chatted for a minute and parted ways. Mission accomplished. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. accepted service of a U.S. District Court summons at home, Portnoy says.

“Obviously this guy was outstanding. He could have quoted legal scripture to me for a week and a half,” Portnoy recalls of his trip to the Roberts home in Chevy Chase, Md., the night of Jan. 4 about 8 p.m. “He was very respectful in a situation where he didn’t have to be.”

Read the rest of the story here.

Australia Says Some Documents Can Be Served via Facebook

The big question about Facebook is does it have any valuable commercial application? Well it seems that the courts have found one.

Today in what appears to be a first in Australia and perhaps the world, Master Harper of the ACT Supreme Court ordered that a default judgement could be served on defendants by notification on Facebook.

Grand Jury Indicts Man Shot Twice By Process Server

A Putnam County grand jury has indicted a man who was shot twice last year in his Putnam Valley driveway by a process server.

The grand jury, however, did not indict the process server, a former Kent town police officer and ex-Kent councilman.

The grand jury returned a four-count indictment against shooting victim Douglas Greenwich, 53, but did not indict Dennis Illuminate, 67.

Woman Being Served Chases Down Family, Process Server in Hummer

A Mequon woman is facing three counts of first-degree reckless endangerment after she chased her estranged husband and their 9-year-old daughter around his Mequon house in a Hummer because he wanted to evict her from her home, a criminal complaint filed in Ozaukee County Circuit Court says.Lawrence Hayes, 29, of Jackson was arraigned Thursday on charges of domestic violence and possession with intent to deliver cocaine.

Judge Bans Process Server Stokes and Levin

A process server accused of falsifying documents has been shut down for all practical purposes.

Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office announced that it had convinced Suffolk Superior Court Judge Bruce R. Henry to prohibit Stokes & Levin from acting as a process server, advertising legal process services, accepting money for serving legal papers, and forming another legal process business or operating under a different name.