The Crazy Things We do to Get Your Legal Documents Served Properly

By: Kim Letus

I think we process servers as a group should get together and write a book about our experiences on the road. Who knows, people might actually be willing to pay for this stuff. Maybe we could use the proceeds toward our fund raising efforts to keep us all in business (just kidding). Although I’m in the office and very rarely on the road any longer, my husband, Bob, and the other process servers in our office always have stories to tell.

Just a few of the highlights of Bob’s process serving career:

• He was physically bounced off a porch (deliberately) by a very overweight man to whom he had just served papers. The man’s weapon? His enormous stomach.
• He was sprayed down by a hose.
• A woman he was trying to serve took off on her riding lawnmower, and he had to chase her on foot through a field in order to serve her.
• A woman answered the door completely naked and handed him a bag of trash.
• An elderly lady he had just served asked him to drive she and her friends to Bingo because they had no ride (he did).
• And on a more serious note, the door he was knocking on opened a crack and the barrel of a shotgun came out and was put against his forehead. Most unbelievable was that he proceeded to calmly ask if the person he was looking for was home.

Another process server who worked for us at one time, Sam, looked and spoke like he had walked straight off the set of the Sopranos. A woman for whom he had papers happened to be behind on her car payments. When she answered the door, she handed him her car keys and nervously asked him if it would be alright if she cleaned out her glove compartment before he took the car.

It takes a certain type of person to deal with this type of drama every day and keep plugging along at the job. We, as a group, are a strange and diligent breed.

We had a process server once who quit shortly after spending an hour trudging through an apple orchard filled with migrant workers during apple picking season looking for a particular migrant worker who was dodging child support. She was a fairly good process server, and I hated to lose her; but not everyone is willing to do the ridiculous things we face sometimes in order to get the job done and keep the client happy.

And then there’s George, who has worked with us for a number of years and who is, for all intent and purposes, tireless. George has a very authoritative and imposing demeanor and drives a Crown Victoria which resembles an unmarked police vehicle. Because of this, some people jump to the conclusion, before he identifies himself as a process server, that he is a police officer. George recently adopted an abandoned German Shepherd from a shelter. He plans to train the dog and take it along for company when he serves papers. George serves in a number of bad neighborhoods in Newburgh and Poughkeepsie where there is blatant drug and gang activity. We at the office have been entertaining ourselves lately by speculating about what chaos George will create in Newburgh and Poughkeepsie when he pulls up to the curb with his shepherd in the back of his Crown Victoria, wearing his “Cool Hand Luke” sunglasses, and everyone in the neighborhood starts flushing God-knows-what down their toilets!

and Anyone Else Who Drives for a Living

by Kim Letus

We process servers in New York State are accustomed to dealing with certain weather issues that can temporarily make our jobs more difficult and less profitable. Snow and ice come immediately to mind.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but a good old fashioned snow storm is look­ing pretty damn good to me right about now.

In the past two weeks, Mother Nature has served us a variety pack, starting with a slight earthquake, followed closely by a hurricane, torrential unrelenting rains and resultant flooding, and (the icing on the cake) the tornado that hit upstate several days ago, whipping right across the New York State Thruway. It makes the faint at heart want to park their car and stay home.

The Impact of Hurricane Irene in New York

My business is located in the small city of Kingston, New York, but a good deal of our services are in outlying rural areas and small towns in the six counties we cover.

My servers have had their hands full since Irene blew into town. Many of the rural areas are still flooded, and now a whole new batch of rain storms has descended upon us. My newest server got stranded two counties away last night when his vehicle decided it was tired of getting so wet and just shut off. (Luckily for me, this has not seemed to sour this promising newbie on his job.) Some roads are just gone. One of my servers was traveling a rural road to access a service only to find, after gingerly maneuvering around broken tree limbs and debris, that the road was washed out and blocked off several miles in. Another went to a home to serve someone who had been living there as of a few weeks ago to find the home half covered in water and abandoned.

The Challenges of Business with No Road, Missing Towns

In Greene County in particular the flooding has been devastating. Parts of little towns have been literally washed away. I wouldn’t have expected a town on a mountain to flood to the point that it is partially destroyed. Boy, was I wrong. Some towns in the Hunter Mountain area have suf­fered incomprehensible damage. Many areas are still without power.

Local clients have been understanding about the difficulties we’re encountering in accessing certain locales because they have witnessed the extent of the damage. Several clients not from this area and without first-hand knowledge of the situation here have been incredulous that their papers are not being served as quickly as usual. They simply don’t understand the magnitude of the problem, having not observed it themselves.

Then comes the final challenge that each and every server who works for me has made mention of within the past week: coming face to face with someone who is trying to clean up the mess this unexpected and severe weather has made of their homes and their lives and being in the unenviable position of having to make that poor soul’s day even worse by handing them a summons!

Some days  …..    :/