Problems with Foreclosure Notices Loom as Next Flaw in Process

Improperly served foreclosure notices may be the mortgage industry's next roadblock to repossessing homes.

The Florida attorney general's office is investigating two of the state's largest companies that serve court summonses on homeowners, while at the same time judges are throwing out rulings based on faulty deliveries.

This month, appeals courts in Miami and Palm Beach County sided with homeowners in foreclosures where judges agreed their summonses were not appropriately served.

In the Miami case, the homeowner said she was recovering at her mother's home after surgery when the person serving her the summons swore he personally handed it to her at her residence.

But the server's own notes on the file showed he left the documents at the door after seeing curtains move and assuming someone was home. The homeowner later said she had no knowledge of the foreclosure until a final judgment was entered against her.

"Curtains may move because of the wind or curious cats, and not just because some prospective defendant is attempting to avoid service," the appeals decision noted.

Once entrusted only to sheriff's deputies, summonses may now legally be handled by "special process servers" certified by the court. With the crush of foreclosures statewide, process service has become big business.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Judge Enforces Chevron's Subpoena of Penn. Lawyer

(CN) - A federal judge said Chevron can subpoena a Pennsylvania lawyer and his firm over his role in a $113 billion environmental lawsuit against the oil company in Ecuador. Meanwhile in Ecuador, one day after a judge closed the window to submit new evidence, Chevron tried to invalidate the complaint because it allegedly contains forged signatures.

Joseph Kohn of Kohn, Swift & Graf forfeited his right to attorney-client privilege by letting a documentary crew film strategy sessions, U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois found.

Kohn and another attorney, Steven Donziger, helped Ecuadorians sue Chevron over damage to their community from 30 years of drilling in the country conducted by Texaco, which became a Chevron subsidiary in 2001.

In a bid to draw international attention to the case, and mount pressure on Chevron, they also invited filmmaker Joseph Berlinger to document the rainforest devastation. Berlinger's access gave him an intimate look at the legal strategy adopted by the plaintiffs suing Chevron in Lago Agrio, Ecuador.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Lawyer's Ties to Convicted Process Server Probed

The Nevada State Bar is investigating whether longtime attorney Lizzie Hatcher was truthful to authorities about her professional dealings with the convicted owner of an unlicensed process serving company.

The owner, former Las Vegas police officer Maurice Carroll, was convicted in October of perjury and submitting false affidavits in court.

Assistant Bar Counsel Phil Pattee said Friday that the investigation is the result of a Sept. 9 Las Vegas Review-Journal article on Hatcher's links to Carroll. The report said Hatcher had made conflicting statements about her relationship with Carroll and his company, On Scene Mediations.

Pattee said the results of the investigation will be turned over to a screening panel of the bar's Southern Nevada Disciplinary Board to decide whether to pursue sanctions.

It is against bar rules of professional conduct for a lawyer to engage in "dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation," or to make false statements to judicial officers.

Read more here.

Florida Attorney General Investigating Companies That Serve Foreclosure Papers

The first step in foreclosure process is that the homeowner is supposed to informed that the foreclosure is beginning.

But as millions of Americans face foreclosure, even the process of alerting the homeowner with the serving of a summons has been filled with errors. The Times-Union wrote about some of those problems in October. You can read that story here.

Now the Miami Herald has disclosed that the Florida attorney general is investigating two of the larger companies whose job it is to deliver those papers. The Herald reported that investigation began earlier this month of Gissen & Zawyer Process Service of Miami and ProVest of Tampa.

ProVest is one of the nation's largest process servers. It was also the company involved in several of the cases that the Times-Union wrote about in October. A judge threw out one foreclosure case when he determined that the summons was allegedly served before the case was even filed.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

AccuServe Process Server Seeks Law Firm Clients as Doggedly as Defendants

AccuServe LLC’s daily grind is the stuff of TV movies.

The doorbell rings. The protagonist answers to what he thinks is a flower delivery, but the delivery agent drops the flowers and slaps a thick envelope into his hands instead.

“You’ve been served,” the agent says, then spins on his heels and walks away.

Believe it or not, the cliché is sometimes true, said Kirk Wilhite, co-owner of AccuServe, a Grandview Heights-based process service firm. But it’s not common.

“It’s true, there can be a lot of trickery to it. A lot of people are expecting the complaint or summons, so they try to evade service. It’s not uncommon for them to not answer the door,” Wilhite said.

Not that that helps them. Wilhite said in AccuServe’s eight months in business, he has a 100 percent success rate.

In a nutshell, the business of process serving focuses on a brief and elemental moment in civil cases – the serving of a civil complaint, summons or subpoena. AccuServe is a small but growing firm that wants to make that moment in time big business.

With only $5,000 in start up costs, Wilhite said the company has done $20,000 in its first eight months in business.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Bill to target process servers

In Mississippi, not much is required to be a process server, and some lawmakers believe that needs to change.

Rep. Hank Zuber, R-Ocean Springs, says he'll file a bill in the 2011 Legislature that would require licensing and educational training for process servers. Zuber believes the proposal, which died in the past, will have a chance next session because of the recent scrutiny given process servers handling child support cases for the Mississippi Department of Human Services.

Earlier this year, judges in Hinds and Jackson counties were reviewing hundreds of child support cases to determine whether some process servers had lied about delivering subpoenas.

The process servers worked for subcontractors of YoungWilliams Child Support Division, a Jackson-based company that received a $23 million contract to file about 15,000 cases, manage another 13,000 and operate a call center. Company President Rob Wells has said about 30 of those cases are being reopened because they involved a process server facing the allegations.

Zuber said there have been other instances of process servers failing to properly perform their jobs and it's caused hardships for average citizens. Zuber said the case of Natalie Parker of Ocean Springs is the reason he first filed the bill in 2008.

Parker's driver's license was revoked in 2003 and, because of that, she missed out on job opportunities. She eventually wound up living in her car. Zuber said Parker had told him about how a process server had lied about delivering papers to notify Parker about a lawsuit that had been filed against her.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

U.S. Subpoenas GOP Records

Federal investigators slapped the Republican Party of Florida with a subpoena seeking financial records as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe by the FBI, IRS and U.S. Attorney's Office, the Herald/Times has learned.

The subpoena, delivered Election Day, sought documents related to big spending by top Republican honchos who were given party-paid American Express cards.

Top RPOF officials and investigators declined to comment on the federal probe or the subpoena.

For more than a year, the party has reeled from scandals tied to the credit cards as well as four unrelated state criminal probes into its former chairman, a fundraiser, a former Florida House speaker and a Capitol insider.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Eddie Montgomery's Wife Tracy Files for Divorce

It's not shaping up to be the most wonderful time of the year for Eddie Montgomery. Just a couple of weeks ago the Montgomery Gentry singer revealed that he's been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Now his publicist has confirmed that his wife of more than two decades, Tracy, has filed for divorce.

According to publicist Kirt Webster, Tracy called Eddie Tuesday night and asked what he was doing. As it happened, he was having dinner at his steakhouse in Kentucky with the couple's 23-year-old daughter Brooke. Shortly after the call, a process server presented him with divorce papers right there at the table in front of his daughter.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

You've Been Served, Thanks to Company's iPhone Program

Consumers who default on credit- card payments may get an opportunity to meet an employee or agent of Scott Levine.

Levine, owner of JJL Process Corp. of West Palm Beach, Fla., operates a legal process serving company and many of his clients are credit card companies.

So consumers who fail to make payments on their credit cards shouldn't be surprised to meet one of his iPhone-carrying workers on their doorstep. The JJL worker will be serving the individual with notice that he is a defendant in a civil lawsuit, often over an unpaid credit card debt.

That's not good news, of course, but it beats the alternative: Not getting served and finding out that you face a default judgment because you didn't respond to the lawsuit.

Levine's company has a copyrighted software application for the iPhone that enables him to use the global positioning system track his process servers and determine that they indeed did go to the homes of defendants. The process servers take a photo of the home to show that they stopped there, and global positioning system backs up that evidence.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

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.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

New App Keeps Process Servers in Check

Grand Junction, Colo. (KKCO) - A new phone application will keep court paper servers in check across the globe and the creator lives right here on the western slope.

Local business owner Mike Kingrey created CivilMap.com amid reports nationwide that process servers have not been able to make all their deliveries. Experts say an outdated system has only been feeding into the problem.

Kingrey's CivilMap application will ensure those vital documents will always be signed.. sealed and delivered.

"They do their paperwork electronically and it also electronically verifies everything that transpired during that service," says Kingrey.

The CivilMap application is already getting national recognition with nods from the Amercian Bar Association and positive reviews from the Department of Consumer Affairs.


Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

New Group Wants Tougher Laws for Assaults to Professional Process Servers

The Illinois Association of Professional Process Servers, newly established, has three goals for the organization: Push for tougher penalties for attacking a process server; encourage mandatory training and certification for process servers; and, ask for uniform laws on the status of process servers.

IAPPS vice president Bill Clutter, who is a private investigator in Springfield, says anyone who is a process server knows that, at times, "It can be a risky occupation." He says one of his agents was nearly choked to death by a man who refused to accept service, and Clutter cites a case in Southern Illinois in which a man poked a server and shot into the air in order to scare her off his property. Clutter says state lawmakers should make it a felony to attack a process server, offering more of a deterrent than the current misdemeanor.


Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Case Dropped Against Process Server

The Denver District Attorney's Office dropped a controversial case of criminal mischief filed against a process server who claimed he was a crime victim, not a suspect.

Lynn Kimbrough, a spokesperson for the Denver District Attorney's Office, said a deputy prosecutor "felt the facts of the case didn't support us proving that to a jury" and dismissed the charge on Wednesday.Police and prosecutors had charged Richard Bellizzi after a June 24 incident, which was caught on videotape.

Bellizzi was attempting to serve divorce papers on Englewood anesthesiologist Dr. Oksana Bantley. When the car Bantley was driving stopped on Colorado Boulevard, Bellizzi approached the driver's side and began shouting to Bantley.

Bellizi identified who he was and that he was serving her with divorce documents. Bellizzi was videotaping with one hand, a common measure he says for cases where the subject has tried to avoid being served. He says Bantley had avoided another process server.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

New Questions Being Raised About Court Filings in Foreclosure Cases

The expanding investigation into Florida's foreclosure crisis has turned up a new problem that may involve a number of cases: Individuals hired by law firms to notify struggling homeowners when their foreclosure cases are to be heard in court may have filed faulty or false documents.

Foreclosure defense attorneys and consumer advocates say they have documented a number of foreclosure cases where "process servers" filed questionable paperwork. State investigators who are examining foreclosure documentation problems -- involving law firms that employed "robosigners" to rapidly process claims -- are also taking a close look at process servers, court documents show.

According to lawsuits filed on behalf of homeowners, some individuals appear to have violated the rules of process serving: the personal delivery of legal papers, required by law, notifying people that a foreclosure action has been filed against them. Like "robo-signing" -- the mass signing of foreclosure documents without review by loan servicers -- it's an alleged practice that is putting lenders, and the foreclosure law firms serving them, under fire.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Parker: Toll gets tricked on Halloween by Process Server

Trick, not treat. Erin Toll answered her doorbell on Halloween armed with treats to dole out to little witches and goblins, but instead she was tricked.

A process server tricked the former director of the state's Division of Real Estate into bagging a subpoena to attend a deposition in an insurance case.

"OMG. I went to the door when the bell rang with the candy in hand, and I was SERVED! Very sneaky. Gotta give the process server credit," Toll wrote on her Facebook page Sunday.

It may have been sneaky, but it's not a tactic that law enforcement officers or private process servers use to track down those who are difficult to find.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Bank of America, JPMorgan Get Texas Subpoenas on Foreclosures

Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase and Co. and seven other banks or loan servicers were subpoenaed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott for information about their foreclosure practices, a spokesman said.

“The state is subpoenaing information and documents,” Jerry Strickland, the spokesman, said yesterday in an interview. He didn’t elaborate. The state also subpoenaed Ally Financial Inc., CitiMortgage Inc. and Wells Fargo and Co.

Abbott began investigating foreclosure practices in Texas following the disclosure of a December deposition in which an employee of Ally’s GMAC Mortgage unit testified that his team signed about 10,000 documents a month without verifying their accuracy. On Oct. 13, all 50 state attorneys general announced a joint investigation of foreclosures.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Lindsay Lohan - Process Server Fails To Hand Lohan Legal Papers

A photographer who is suing Lindsay Lohan is struggling to serve the actress with legal papers - a process worker was turned away recently as he tried to present her with the lawsuit during her stay in rehab.

The Mean Girls actress is accused of failing to honor a deal to give snapper Scot Nathan a one per cent share in her clothing line 6126 in exchange for a photo shoot.

He launched legal action against Lohan in April (10) and a process server attempted to visit the troubled star at the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, California earlier this month (17Oct10) - but he was denied access and instead gave the papers to the security guard.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

SLO Process Server Gets New Felony Charge

Lyza Johnsen, a process server with the San Luis Obispo-based Johnsen & Johnsen Legal Support Services, was taken into custody on Oct. 20 during an appearance at SLO County Superior Court.

Facing three felony charges and one misdemeanor ranging from writing bad checks to grand theft, Johnsen was originally scheduled for an arraignment. But on Oct. 19, the District Attorney’s Office filed another felony charge claiming that Johnsen wrote another bad check just days before her court appearance.

Deputy District Attorney Matt Kerrigan asked Judge Michael Duffy to sign an arrest warrant for the latest case before Johnsen was arraigned on her other felony charges. According to Kerrigan, Johnsen wrote a check for about $1,500, using an account that was closed after she allegedly wrote about $50,000 in bad checks, for which she is now facing felony charges.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

MBS Investors Get Themselves Organized for Repurchase Lawsuits

GMAC Mortgage is following the lead of Bank of America, assuring the public about independent reviews and returning to the foreclosure process in the 23 judicial states when those reviews are completed. They continue the party line of all servicers that they have “found no evidence to date of any inappropriate foreclosures.”

This flies in the face of the standard practice to reward fraud at the foreclosure mill law firms.

"Some employees of Florida’s largest “foreclosure mill” were given jewelry, cars and houses from the firm, in exchange for altering and forging key documents used to obtain foreclosures, according to a statement released today by the Florida Attorney General’s Office.

The office released transcripts of two interviews it conducted for its investigation into the law offices of David J. Stern. The sworn statements were from Kelly Scott, a former employee of Stern’s and Mary R. Cordova, a former employee of G&Z, a process server used by Stern’s office. The women’s testimonies appear to back up that of former Stern’s employee Tammie Lou Kapusta, whose statement was released last week. The three statements paint a picture of a secret system designed to speed up the foreclosure process. Attorneys and staff members forged signatures, changed dates, passed around notary stamps, the women say in interviews with attorney general’s staff.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

TEMECULA: City Having a Hard Time Serving Tribe With Suit

The city of Temecula hit an early hurdle with its lawsuit against the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians: The tribe won't allow a process server to enter the reservation to formally serve the suit, city officials said Wednesday.

Mayor Jeff Comerchero said he's been briefed on the situation and he said the city plans to continue to make every attempt to serve the tribe.

If the tribe ultimately succeeds in stymieing the city's process server, however, Comerchero said there are other options.

"We go into the court and demonstrate that (the difficulty in serving the tribe), and that should suffice," he said.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Charges dog a SLO process server

At first, Brian Stacy believed everything Lyza Johnsen told him. He originally hired her as a process server in his lawsuit against French Hospital Medical Center. Soon, though, Johnsen was providing him advice and putting him in contact with experts who would help his case—or so he thought.

When Johnsen first told Stacy she would put him in touch with a clever Santa Monica-based paralegal named Hope O’Connell, he didn’t think much of it—he just wrote a check. When he saw that O’Connell’s e-mail was a Gmail account, he didn’t think much of it—and he wrote some more checks. After writing about $24,000 worth of checks to Johnsen, a woman who was recommended to him, he started to get suspicious.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Broward Law Firm Challenges Foreclosure Subpoena

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- A Broward County judge is mulling over a law firm's challenge to the validity of Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum's investigation into foreclosure practices.

Attorneys for the Law Offices of David J. Stern claimed Tuesday that the attorney general's office has no authority to investigate. State lawyers contend they have authority in their role as consumer advocates.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Laura Dern Surprised By Divorce Papers

A process server went to Laura Dern's home on Saturday with divorce papers and demanded that she come to the door ... or else, sources tell TMZ.

We're told the couple's nanny came to the door and told the process server she would accept the divorce papers Ben Harper filed late Friday afternoon, but sources say the process server

fired back that if Laura didn't come to the door he'd find her out in public and embarrass her.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

New Subpoenas Issued In John Edwards Campaign Probe

Federal prosecutors have issued a new round of subpoenas in their probe of John Edwards' campaign finances -- giving the investigation seemingly stalled for a year fresh signs of life, the Associated Press reported.

Lawyer Wade Smith told the AP that he learned from other attorneys and sources that several new subpoenas were issued, but declined to discuss who received the subpoenas or what those subpoenas were seeking. Smith did not immediately return a message left by TPMMuckraker, and Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said the department was declining comment.

But according to CNN Producer Raelyn Johnson, prosecutors are casting net "much wider than they did a year ago."

"They're talking about people who were schedulers, staffers, small-time staffers, including very, very big people involved with the campaign," she said Thursday.

Edwards, who ran for president in 2004 and 2008, admitted in 2008 that he'd had an affair with Rielle Hunter, a videographer on his campaign -- though, initially, his former aide Andrew Young announced he was the father of Hunter's child. Earlier this year, Edwards publicly admitted for the first time that he fathered Hunter's child and Edwards and his wife Elizabeth separated after 30 years of marriage.

The feds are looking at whether the Edwards campaign used funds to cover up his affair. Hunter and Young made appearances at a federal courthouse in Raleigh, N.C. last year to testify before a grand jury. Young said he did not receive a subpoena this time around.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!

Call Girl Hits Back at Beckham, Files Lawsuit Claiming She Told Truth

As if he didn't have enough issues to deal with, David Beckham is getting hit with a countersuit by former call girl Irma Nici.

Nici has been making the rounds claiming she had a one-night stand with the soccer stud—leading him to sue In Touch, which first printed her story. Now, she says the backlash sent her to the hospital and Beckham must pay!

Nici and her lawyer, Paul Rolf Jensen, issued a carefully worded statement Friday announcing their legal action seeking to have Beckham's lawsuit tossed.

"The former call girl who was sent to the hospital earlier this week as a result of the hounding she received at the hands of David Beckham and his legal team has struck back," their statement began.

Without specifically mentioning any affair or the In Touch report, they claim that Nici did "tell the truth to the press" and that should keep her from being targeted in a lawsuit.

"California law does not allow public figures like David Beckham to stifle free speech. Maybe he didn't live here in Los Angeles long enough to learn how precious we here consider our rights to tell the truth in print," says Jensen.

"Beckham must have confused American law with the law back in his home country, where there isn't a such a sacred respect for free speech."

We're not certain how up to speed Becks is with American law, but he's sure getting a crash course this week.

Read more here and follow us on Twitter!