In my dealings with lawyers and courts I occasionally receive, or am required submit, documents by registered mail (by which I mean a service which provides proof of posting and of delivery—the service goes by different names in different countries). I am wondering why this is so. Surely this service can’t be used to establish that a particular document was sent or received by someone, since the postal service doesn’t actually examine the contents of the envelope. At best it can prove that the sender mailed the recipient something, and that the recipient received it. If I am suing someone in small claims court and am required by the court to serve the defendant by registered post, what’s to stop me from sending him a blank piece of paper in hopes that he will ignore it, fail to show up to court, and have a summary judgment entered against him? Or even if I do send the real service papers, what’s to stop the defendant from later claiming that I sent him a blank piece of paper to excuse his non-appearance at court because he forgot to attend?
Proof of delivery. For the US Gov’t, proof of mailing (to the last Known Address) by Certified Mail is proof of delivery
Yes, you could send blank pages, but then the recipient would know something is up. It would also be pretty serious fraud.
Yeah, when the OP said, “sending him a blank piece of paper in hopes that he will ignore it”, that really seemed far-fetched. If you get a piece of registered mail are you really going to ignore it?
For the same reason, if the recipient claims he received blank paper, nobody would believe him because it’s a stupid thing to do.
A lot of people, not understanding the law, do stupid things thinking they can get away with it. I’ve sent out registered mail and had it come back, unsigned with three delivery attempts and then when I move forward they’ll call me up and tell me that I can’t press charges because they never received anything in the mail. What they don’t understand is that it’s not that they have to receive something, it’s that I have to prove that I attempted to send it to them. A singed receipt is as good as the sealed envelope with the letter carrier’s signature saying he attempted delivery but there was no one there to receive it. Personally, I’d rather they just signed for it and threw it out. I know I’m not getting my money with a letter anyways. It’s just a formality before I can move forward*.
Regarding the OP, I’ve often wondered that myself. I’ve wondered why the post office doesn’t offer some type of service where you bring the papers to them, they would photocopy and mail off the originals and then provide you with the copies and some sort of proof that the copies were sent. Perhaps a notary style stamp on each page with a serial number that would match the number on the return receipt. This would prove not only that you sent something, but what it contained. OTOH, there doesn’t seem to be much of a demand for such a service.
OK, admittedly that was far-fetched. Here’s a more plausible scenario: Bob has an actionable complaint against Mary, so he tries writing to her to resolve the issue. Mary ignores the letters, so Bob starts sending them by registered mail, and is thereby assured that Mary is actually receiving them. Mary continues to ignore the letters, so Bob feels he has no choice but to take the matter to court. However, Mary having ignored all his letters has so infuriated Bob that instead of sending service by registered mail, he just sends a photocopy of his last negotiation letter by registered mail, and submits proof of its delivery to the court. As usual, Mary ignores the registered letter of negotiation, not knowing that Bob has sued her. Bob shows up in court on the appointed day, Mary does not, and Mary has a default judgment entered against her. Mary later learns of this and appeals to the court that she was never serviced. Bob maliciously claims that Mary is a liar as she has a proven record of ignoring even registered letters, submitting as evidence of this all the delivery receipts from before the case. Mary presents the copy of the negotiation letter which Bob sent her in lieu of the service, but Bob claims that Mary simply photocopied one of his previous letters. Here both the defendant and plaintiff have plausible stories; who is the judge going to believe?
The judge is going to set aside the order and remand it back to the lower court with instructions to begin afresh. And very possibly the lower Court judge is going to get a very annoyed phone cal from his superiors.
Service is a process courts take very seriously. While exact procedures vary across jurisdictions the courts do their utmost to ensure that the person to be served; is in fact served. For this process servers are employed or contracted by the Court service whose job is to ensure that service is effected.
Your scenario is not plausible. Trial dates are not set in the absence of the other party. What would happen is the first time Mary fails to show up, most likely the Court would order the service to be repeated; is the absence continue, they might send a Bailiff or another court official to her place to ascertain the situation or perhaps order substituted service (ordering publication in the newspaper, posting a notice on the board of the Courthouse both of which means that Mary is likely to find out).
Courts are not stupid. They deal with human deviousness on a daily basis. What makes you think it would be easy to fool a Court; especially with a trick like that.
I’m kind of surprised that Joey P can provide notice with registered mail that was never delivered. I was peripherally involved in a legal matter where one party didn’t accept the registered mail with required notification. Being tricky and Fedexing to the party’s secretary (it was technically a business that was the involved party) worked, but after that the next step would have been hiring a server to hand it to him in person. Just attempting to notify using registered mail wasn’t sufficient.
I have wondered about the 'Well, I can prove I sent him something" aspect of registered mail. I concluded the legal system is generally set up to work with common technology of a generation ago, and 40 years ago, there wasn’t much you could do to prove what actually had been sent.
For the record, it’s not that I was ‘serving’ them with court papers or anything like that. I was trying to recover money from a bounced check. In my jurisdiction, the first thing I have to do is demand they make good on the check, in writing, to the last known address (the address on the check). All I have to do is attempt. If they don’t come in after 10 days, I hand the bad check and the signed receipt to the police. If I get the unsigned or refused letter back, I can hand that back to the police.
So this might be a little different in that all I have to do is prove that I attempt to send them the letter. I really didn’t care if they got it. In fact, flat out refusing the registered mail was as good as signing for it in my book.
One thing I’ve done on the rare occasion I’ve served someone by mail is to attach a cover letter, which includes a line below the address something like “VIA Certified Mail, Return Receipt Requested, Item# 123456789”. The text of the letter will be something like “Enclosed please find a summons and complaint, along with…” I do not remember the exact wording, but there is a number on the certified card, and you keep something like a receipt with that number on it, attached to your copy of whatever you mailed.
You may see shenanigans with lay litigants, but I would be very surprised to see a lawyer do something like mail a blank piece of paper and then take a default judgment claiming proper service. That would be committing a fraud on the court and could lead to disbarment. Might also lead to criminal charges.
That kind of stupidity I can believe. What I can’t believe is that someone would be so stupid as to send someone a blank piece of paper by registered mail. I mean, even the dumbest idiot must know the chances of being caught are 99%. And because of that, I don’t think anyone would believe someone who said he received a blank piece of paper by registered mail.
If nobody would believe someone who said he received a blank piece of paper, then why are you so sure the sender would get caught? Seems like the perfect crime.
Service by publication would not suffice if you are seeking a judgment against the person. It suffices only in in rem proceedings.
The U.S. Tax Court seems to hear cases with some regularity that involve claims that a taxpayer sent documents by Certified or Registered Mail that the IRS claims not to have received.
The Tax Court looks at the amount of postage noted on the receipt and what often trips these people up is that the amount of postage is insufficient for an envelope that contained the purported number of documents. See:
Silk v Commissioner
Edelen v Commissioner
Willaims v Commissioner
So, not only are people bold enough to make false claims about what they sent to the IRS, they are bold enough to make these claims in court filings.
I don’t think you should make such a blanket statement without knowing the jurisdiction in question and its rules of civil procedure. Court-orderd substituted service by publication is a valid option in my jurisdiction to begin personal proceedings against someone who is evading service.
The details of personal service will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but in my jurisdiction, the mere fact of sending something by registered post isn’t sufficient to prove service. Someone (typically the secretary or para-legal) then has to swear an affidavit, (1) attaching a true copy of the document sent by registered post, (2) swearing that he/she put the true copy in the registered post, and (3) attaching the proof of delivery by the post office. It’s that affidavit as a whole which is the proof of service, not just the document from the post office.
Nowadays the true copy is a photocopy; I suppose before photocopiers, it would have been a carbon copy (fortunately I can say I’m young enough to not know how it worked before photocopiers); before carbons, I imagine it would have been a hand-written copy by Bartleby the Scrivener.
Something else in the rules of process that must be remembered – process by mail must be served by a third party. When I have mailed papers in court cases, someone else had to sign the proof of service; lawyers had papers mailed by the secretary (as an officer of the court, a lawyer might have have been allowed to mail them himself, but I don’t really know).
Funny thing: in my case, the initial service was made by a process server, who not only didn’t serve me personally, but served the papers on my upstairs neighbor. Since I live in a gated apartment building, this might have been acceptable, but he then claimed to have served the papers on me personally, providing a description (black man over 6’ tall and 200 lbs.) which did not fit me (white man, 5’11", 175 lbs.), certainly not my neighbor (white woman, short and skinny), nor anyone living in the building (the one black man living there was maybe 130 lbs.). I filed to quash the service, but the whole thing got dropped later.
This rule is specific to your jurisdiction. I’ve served people in a jurisdiction which had no such requirement.