A New Jersey appellate court has affirmed the dismissal of a debt buyer’s collection lawsuit after finding the plaintiff filed in the wrong county and failed to properly serve the defendant, despite having information pointing to his actual address.
The background: The plaintiff, a debt buyer, purchased a defaulted personal loan and filed suit in Essex County to recover the unpaid balance. The defendant had taken out the loan while living in Kearny, which is in Hudson County, not Essex County. A court clerk flagged the potential venue problem shortly after the complaint was filed, noting the defendant’s Hudson County address in the pleadings.
- Rather than re-filing in Hudson County, the plaintiff sought to serve the complaint at a Newark address in Essex County, where a sheriff’s officer left the summons and complaint with a person identified as the defendant’s “friend/roommate.”
- The defendant moved to dismiss, certifying that he had never lived at the Newark address and had resided continuously in Kearny at the time the loan was issued and when service was attempted.
- The plaintiff countered that the person who accepted service was actually the defendant’s sister-in-law, and that the defendant’s in-laws owned the Newark property.
- The trial court was not persuaded, dismissed the complaint for improper venue and defective service, and directed the plaintiff to re-file in Hudson County.
- The plaintiff moved for reconsideration, arguing the court should have held a hearing to resolve the factual dispute over service. That motion was denied. The plaintiff then appealed, though it abandoned its request for a plenary hearing before oral argument.
The ruling: The Appellate Division affirmed the lower court’s dismissal, finding no error in its orders. The court noted that the plaintiff had conducted what it described as “detailed forensic investigations” to find a Newark address for the defendant, despite already having information that he lived in Kearny. No attempt to serve the defendant at his known Kearny address was ever made or even shown to have been considered.
- Under New Jersey’s service rules, a return of service ordinarily carries a presumption of validity, but that presumption only applies when the underlying service was facially proper.
- Because the plaintiff failed to make any showing that the defendant had even minimal contact with the Newark address where service was attempted, the court found the presumption did not attach and the burden of disproving valid service could not shift to the defendant.
- The dismissal and the order to re-file in Hudson County were affirmed.
