Am I EVIL? :)

Ok, a little bit of a preface is needed.

To summarize the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; Rule 4.

When you file a Federal suit, you have 2 ways to effect service.

One is to be nice, and kind, and try to save your advisory the costs of personal service, send it via the mail with a form (AO399), give them 60 days to return a signed copy of the form, via a PRE-PAID envelope, no less, and say "Yep, we received it."

One is to cut to the chase, send a process server to their doors/business.

I try to be nice... well sometimes...(sigh)

So, now here I sit one month post-due date. Just finished a letter to combat the "Florida Election Crisis of 2000". If you think back, the strategy was to keep the election officials in court, the entire week that they had to manually re-count the election results, and tweak those sweet little dimples... Ooops, wrong dimples.

If your a democrat, the republican strategy of keeping them in court worked.

Well, FRCP 4, has a similar caveat, which I just fought evilly...

See, similar to the "Florida Election Crisis of 2000", service is to be completed within 120 days of the filing of the complaint.

Now, if you're extra nice, like I try to be, and give them an extra 30 days to try to keep them from having to pay the service fees... (Ah, the BENEFIT of the nice route, if you serve them the nice route, and they don't return the form, THEY become liable for the costs of service, AND the legal fees to collect them. ) You only have 30 days to serve them, PERSONALLY, via the naughty route.

Which gives them a nice little playbook from the "Florida Election Crisis of 2000", delay the plaintiff from serving the complaint to 120 days + 1, and file a motion to dismiss the complaint for lack of service.

So, at the near end of the 60 day period to return the form, their attorney nicely decides to try to dispose of the complaint, taking a week or so between attempts, to dangle it out the 2 additional months.

Ooops, aren't we supposed to realize that that is their intent.

So, now to dispose of the "Florida Election Crisis of 2000" problem, I just drafted a 5 page facsimile to send to their attorney.

Essentially...

(or to decide to actually get around to finish deciding to dispose of the complaint... )

 

In case someone needs help sleeping, here's FRCP4...

http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/Rule4.htm

 

By the way, sometimes it's better to play dumb, even after they should know that you aren't...

Imagine, if I sent the GOTCHA letter 1 day or 2 days after the due date, or even 1 week...

(FRCP 4 says 30 days, but the AO399 approved by the MDPA USDC says 60 days.)

Now, allowing an extra 30 days over what is stated as being reasonable, shows that I've been MORE THAN REASONABLE, and showing restraint and bending over backwards to mitigate the legal fees which the defendant would be responsible for in the end.

Imagine them going to court, challenging them having to pay service fees, when they were allowed 30 days additionally, and further WARNED that service via personal service would be eminent if the form waiving it wasn't immediately returned.