Chicago Suit Challenging Use Of Private Process Servers In F'closure Actions Could Void Thousands Of Cases In Cook County; "Sewer Service" A Concern

In Chicago, Illinois, Chicago News Cooperative reports in The New York Times:

• In the summer of 2007, with the housing bubble bursting and the number of foreclosure cases soaring, [Dorothy Kirie Kinnaird, the presiding judge in the Chancery Division of Cook County Circuit Court,] issued an order making it easier for mortgage-foreclosure lawyers to hire special process servers to do what otherwise would be carried out by Cook County sheriff’s deputies, according to records reviewed by the Chicago News Cooperative and the Better Government Association.

***

• A lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Chicago is challenging the practice, saying it is a violation of state and federal law for the judge to allow freer use of special process servers. The lawyer for David L. Washington, the foreclosed property owner who is the plaintiff in the suit, said he hoped to convert the case into a class-action suit that would void tens of thousands of foreclosure cases handled by special process servers in recent years.

***

• Edward T. Joyce, the lawyer for Mr. Washington, the plaintiff in the case, said Judge Kinnaird’s order was well-intentioned. But Mr. Joyce said her action was most favorable to banks and foreclosure lawyers because it allowed them to serve papers on debtors more quickly and cheaply. He also said the private process servers often engaged in “sewer service” — stuffing court papers between sewer grates in front of debtors’ homes.

For more, see Use of Private Process Servers Is Up; Concern Is, Too.

For the lawsuit, see Washington v. Wells Fargo Bank NA.