Use of Private Process Servers Is Up; Concern Is, Too

Frank Knight in the back yard of his Northwest Side bungalow.
John Konstantaras/Chicago News Cooperative

CHICAGO NEWS COOPERATIVE 

By DAN MIHALOPOULOS and PATRICK REHKAMP
July 22, 2010

When Frank Knight fell behind on his house payments in 2008 and the mortgage lender began a foreclosure case, a process server said he handed Mr. Knight the court papers at his bungalow on Chicago’s Northwest Side.

But public records show that at the time the server said Mr. Knight was being served, Mr. Knight was at a job site on the West Side, more than seven miles from his brick home in the Jefferson Park neighborhood.

“He lied on his affidavit,” Mr. Knight said this week. “I just feel like they were trying to foreclose upon me and my family as fast as possible. Why? So the bank could get their hands on this property, so they could turn it around.”

Frank Knight Explains A Hole In A Foreclosure Process Server's Claim from Chicago News Cooperative on Vimeo.

The man responsible for hand-delivering the foreclosure papers to Mr. Knight’s home is a special process server, an employee of a private detective agency. In the summer of 2007, with the housing bubble bursting and the number of foreclosure cases soaring, a Cook County judge issued an order making it easier for mortgage-foreclosure lawyers to hire special process servers to do what otherwise would be carried out by Cook County sheriff’s deputies, according to records reviewed by the Chicago News Cooperative and the Better Government Association.

The process server in Mr. Knight’s case was Timothy McWard, who said he did not recall the case. But Mr. McWard said he has served more than 20,000 legal documents in the past five years and the papers are “always given to somebody,” he said. “They will say whatever they can to save their house.”

Read the full story:  Use of Private Process Servers Is Up; Concern Is, Too