My First Mistake!

[UpsideDownMI]

I discovered my first mistake in my case today. I received a receipt from the post office today indicating that my summons and complaint for my AP is being returned to me by the post office as undeliverable. After I checked all of my paper work, I realized that I had the incorrect street name for the defendant. I was floored with disbelief that I made this clerical mistake, but I will get past it.

I filed the AP on 9/30 and the response to the summons is due on 10/30. If I re-serve the complaint and summons tomorrow I believe I should be OK according the Federal Adversary Proceeding Rule 7004 (e), which states that the summons and complaint must be deposited in the mail within 10 days of issuance or a new summons must be issued. Since tomorrow is the within 10 days I should only have to file a new proof of service with the court clerk after I serve the complaint and summons to the correct address.

I will verify this with the clerk in the morning, but I just wanted to vent my frustration with the board.

[justbroke]

Your first mistake, was listening to me. LOL

Good job on validating with the clerk. Yes, a new certificate of service needs to be filed BUT, you may need to have the other Certificate of Service stricken from the record. You may want to ask a "procedural" question on that topic as well.

[UpsideDownMI]

Thanks for the reply. Good point on the proof of service. I plan on asking clerk the procedure to remedy this as soon as they open in the morning.

I am curious on whether I will have to re-serve all parties or just the party in which I made the error. I have not been able to find anything in either federal or local rules on how to remedy an error with proof of service.

I will keep you posted.

[justbroke]

I am curious on whether I will have to re-serve all parties or just the party in which I made the error.

Just the party in error. I've done this before. I filed a "new" certificate for only that party. However, in my case, my deficiency notice was that I "forgot" to serve it on another address. (Local Rule is that you serve motions on "all addresses and parties" on the proof of claim!)

However, I think you may need two proof of services now. (And this is just me talking...) First, "widthdraw" that other certificate of service as it probably shows all parties served at the same time. Then create two new proof of services. The first one would be for the ones already serviced and the date you served them. The second being just for the one with the bad service address.

Good luck... and don't listen to me. LOL

[2manybills]

Thanks for the reply. Good point on the proof of service. I plan on asking clerk the procedure to remedy this as soon as they open in the morning.

I am curious on whether I will have to re-serve all parties or just the party in which I made the error. I have not been able to find anything in either federal or local rules on how to remedy an error with proof of service.

I will keep you posted.

Usually you only have to re-serve the party whose address was an error. All you need to do is file a "amended" proof of service with the court for that one address and then serve that with the other documents on that party.

[UpsideDownMI]

My mistake should be corrected. I called the clerk this morning and was told that since it was still within 10 days from issuance of the summons, I could re-mail the summons and complaint to the correct address. I had to file a new proof of service for just the party in which the mistake was made. The clerk said that I did not need to amend my prior proof of service, since I did attempt to serve the party.

Other than the cost to re-mail and to notarize the new proof of service, it wasn't so bad. For that I am thankful.

[justbroke]

Other than the cost to re-mail and to notarize the new proof of service, it wasn't so bad. For that I am thankful.

Excellent! At least you found your issue and immediately took action. Something many pro se filers don't stay on top of.

[UpsideDownMI]

Thanks! I just hope the clerk is right. LOL. At least it is already mailed to the correct address, so if their is an issue with the proof of service I could correct it again without having to have a new summons issued, as I do not want to restart the clock.