Update submitted by Duval County Committee Member Olga McMenamy
October 6, 2005

This is the Memo & Agreement (PDF) from the Sheriff's Office that had been mailed to the Process Servers in alphabetical order. The first ones received was 9 days prior to their implementing the program. If we did not sign the agreement we no longer would be licensed by the Sheriff's Office. This would do away with any private process serving company in Duval County.

As stated in the memo below, a large group of us hired this attorney from Miami who has tried cases with local Sheriffs and had successfully won the cases on behalf of the Process Servers. After our attorney contacted the General Counsel's Office a public meeting hosted by the Sheriff's Department took place 10/03/05. In that meeting they stated they need some time to rethink the program and rescinded on the 10/01/03 date, and were unable to give us a new date at this time.

They very strongly stated this is taking place because they want more oversight to protect the Sheriff, the city and the citizens of Jacksonville. They are basing their case on the fact that the city was sued for $400,000.00 for an improper service. This improper service was performed by one of their vendors in which the Sheriff had oversight on the entire paper work involved in this service. (The Sheriff had 2 companies that were contracted with the Sheriff.) There have been no lawsuits involving the private sector of the process serving community in over 25 years.

The insurance factor will put many companies and process servers out of business. So far, they will not budge on this issue. We have approximately 96 process servers who are being represented by our attorney. There are more who have not joined this group as they have their own attorneys or may come on board at a later time.

Just a little synopsis of what they want to take place. All services coming into Duval County will go through the Sheriff's Dept. (quoting Sgt. Mike, "even if it comes from South Africa"). If the process server's client sends service directly to them, the process server will have to bring it to the Sheriff's Civil Process Unit to be logged and scanned prior to issuing them. Server will have to go back to get the paper after it is logged in and bring it to the clerk in the court to issue. It will then have to be brought back to the Civil Process Unit to have the case number logged in. They state they will try to accommodate the server by putting their station in the court. They also state we could wait as they scan and log in this work or it will be put in a basket. In a very perfect world it might work, but there is no way possible with the amount of papers that go through the court system will that happen. It is also not guaranteed that the process server is going to get back their client's work as the process server will be unable to wait for work as most do now when they bring it directly to the clerk in the court. This will DEFINITELY ELIMINATE RUSH or special attention papers. This will greatly affect the normal flow of service provided our clients on a daily basis.

In attempting to call Mayor Peyton, they state the Mayor has no jurisdiction over the Sheriff even though the Mayor is promoting small business and the Sheriff is trying to put us all out of business.

There are approximately 1,800 attorneys within the Fourth Judicial Circuit. That is just a minute number of attorneys and private citizens that will be affected by this policy they are trying to put in place. The burden on the courts and judges will also be highly impacted and will have a ripple affect throughout the United States. It will definitely put Duval County on the map and definitely not in a good light (to say the least).

Along with our attorney, we have the Florida Association of Professional Process Servers giving us all the help they can muster up. The National Association of Professional Process Servers is also ready to offer assistance.

A meeting is set to take place on 10/7/05 between our attorney and the Sheriff. We will post further updates as they occur.