Do you have a Default Judgment against you in NY? It may be void.

The New York Attor­ney Gen­eral announced today that they are suing 35 law firms for improper ser­vice of default judg­ments. A party obtains a default judg­ment when the defen­dant does not appear in a law­suit. Amer­i­can Legal Ser­vice, a process server located in Long Island has been named by the Attor­ney Gen­eral as pro­vid­ing improper “sewer”  ser­vice.  The 35 law firms have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

If you wish to re-open a default judg­ment against you due to improper ser­vice based on the Attor­ney General’s action today you should:

1.  Go to the county clerk in the county where the default was filed and obtain the court file.  Check the affi­davit of ser­vice to see if Amer­i­can Legal Ser­vice was the process server.

2.  If you are unable to ascer­tain the name of the process server, check the law firm who started the law­suit.  If it is one of the 35 law firms listed in the Attor­ney General’s com­plaint then:

3.  File a motion to vacate the default for improper ser­vice of process.

At this point, it is unclear what the reme­dies would be for insti­tut­ing an action, espe­cially in cases where the statute of lim­i­ta­tions has run for vacat­ing a default.  In New York, the statute of lim­i­ta­tions is one year.  How­ever, the court or some other gov­ern­men­tal body may fash­ion new law based on this mass fraud.