A Florida appeals court has reversed a default judgment a debt buyer won nearly a decade ago, ruling the judgment was void because the defendant was never properly served under the state’s substitute-service law.
The background: The case dates back more than 10 years and turned on who answered the door the first time the lawsuit was served.
- About a decade ago, the plaintiff, a debt buyer, sued the defendant over roughly $2,229 in unpaid credit card debt.
- Two weeks later it filed a return of service stating the papers had been left at a Sunrise, Florida home with the defendant’s cousin, relying on the rule that allows service on a co-resident.
- A county court entered a default judgment for the plaintiff the following year.
- Eight years after that, the plaintiff moved to garnish the defendant’s wages, and the defendant’s attorney soon filed a motion to vacate the default and the judgment.
- At an evidentiary hearing, the plaintiff offered no testimony or documents. The defendant testified she had been living with her boyfriend in another city at the time and that the Sunrise address was her mother’s house, though she acknowledged her driver’s license still listed it.
- The cousin testified she had never lived at the Sunrise address and was there only that day to visit her grandmother, whom she saw about once a month.
- The county court denied the motion, and the defendant appealed.
The ruling: The Appeals Court reversed, holding the default judgment was void because the defendant was never properly served.
- Judge Shannon K. Shaw of Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal wrote that substitute service is a narrow exception to personal service and is allowed only when papers are left at a person’s usual home with someone who actually resides there.
- Even assuming the Sunrise address was the defendant’s usual home, the court said service still failed because the cousin did not live there, and the plaintiff offered nothing to rebut her testimony.
- Quoting earlier case law, the court noted that a judgment entered without valid service “is void for lack of personal jurisdiction and may be collaterally attacked at any time.”
- Because the judgment was void from the start, the age of the case did not save it, and the defendant could challenge it years later.
- The court sent the case back with instructions to vacate the default judgment.
