Our client recently tried to take out a loan and discovered that a judgment for tens of thousands of dollars had been entered against for a different loan which they had supposedly not paid in the past. Our client had no idea about the lawsuit or the judgment and had never been sent anything in the mail, nor were they ever served a copy of the complaint. While the actual procedure to notify someone of a lawsuit can be a little more nuanced, it is fair(but not entirely accurate) to say that before you can win a court case against someone, most of the time, you need a hand a copy of the lawsuit to them, or to someone who lives with them. That was simply never done to our client, despite papers being filed with the courthouse claiming that it had been done.
According to the documents filed with the courthouse, the “return of service”, (an unknown person with a physical description which did not in any way resemble our client or any member of their household) had been served a copy of the complaint years ago. We were able to contact the employer of our client and obtain documents proving that at the time our client was supposedly served, years ago, our client was at work. We also swiftly obtained sworn written statements from every member of our client’s household stating that no one who even remotely matched the physical description of our client had ever lived there. This seemed to be an instance of what is called “sewer service”, where a process server writes a generic description of a person, claims they did not share their name and just threw away the papers, though it is possible it was a clerical error.
In the end, we were able to vacate the judgment, reset the clock on an old case, and significantly improve our client’s situation.
Loan Lawyers has helped over 5,000 South Florida homeowners and consumers with their debt problems, we have saved over 1,800 homes from foreclosure, eliminated $100,000,000 in mortgage principal and consumer debt, and have collected millions of dollars on behalf of our clients due to bank, loan servicer, and debt collector violations, negligence and fraud.
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