Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03016/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03016-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 190
Nature of Suit: Other Contract Actions
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-3016

DURUKAN AMERICA, LLC,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

RAIN TRADING, INC. and

YAVUZ BURAK CANBULAT,

Defendants-Appellants.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 1:13-cv-01322 — Samuel Der-Yeghiayan, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED APRIL 29, 2015 — DECIDED JUNE 3, 2015

____________________

Before BAUER, MANION, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff Durukan America, a 

Texas candy company, sued Rain Trading, an Illinois wholesaler, and its president Yavuz Canbulat for breach of contract 

and deceptive practices. To prove service, Durukan filed 

with the court two affidavits from a process server. After a 

month passed without an answer from the defendants, the 

district court entered a default judgment for Durukan. AlCase: 14-3016 Document: 28 Filed: 06/03/2015 Pages: 7
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most a year later the defendants moved to vacate the default 

judgment, submitting an affidavit and records to show that 

they were never served. Without holding a hearing to address the dueling affidavits, the district court denied the motion to vacate. Because the district court should have held a 

hearing to resolve the factual conflict in the affidavits, we 

reverse and remand.

Durukan sued Rain Trading and Canbulat for, according 

to the complaint, refusing to pay for about $86,000 worth of 

candy and gum. Durukan filed an affidavit of service for 

each defendant. The process server attested that he served 

Canbulat “[b]y leaving a copy with the named party, Yavuz 

Burak Canb[u]lat personally on April 2, 2013,” a Tuesday, at 

4:05 p.m. at 3033 Malmo Drive in Arlington Heights, Illinois. 

This is the corporation’s registered address. The corporation 

was served, according to the second affidavit, “by leaving a 

copy with Yavuz Burak Canbulat, Authorized Person” on the 

same date and time and at the same location. The process 

server identified the person he served as male, Caucasian, 

and approximately 36 years old. The affidavits were signed 

and notarized.

The defendants did not respond to the complaint. The 

district court entered a default judgment in favor of 

Durukan for $88,365.77. Two months later the court issued a 

summons to garnish Canbulat’s wages. Durukan filed another affidavit of service in which the process server stated 

that he served the summons on Rain Trading “by leaving a 

copy with Adam Ozturk, Sales Department and Authorized 

Person on July 25, 2013,” at 2:10 p.m. at the same Arlington 

Heights address. The defendants did not respond to the garnishment summons.

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No. 14-3016 3

Ten months later the defendants moved to reopen the 

case. They swore that they had learned of the suit only because an officer of the Cook County Sheriff’s Department 

had just arrested Canbulat for failing to appear at a state 

court proceeding to discover his assets. Eleven days after 

that arrest, the defendants moved to set aside the default 

judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(4). 

Canbulat attached to the motion a two-page affidavit stating 

that Durukan’s affidavits of service were “false and erroneous” and that neither defendant “was served...at the time 

and place therein stated [in the Affidavits of Service] or at 

any time or place.” Canbulat continued: “After reviewing 

both affidavits of the process server, I checked the records 

and verified that at the said date and time, I was employed 

with and working at Abbvie,” a company located 25 miles (a 

half-hour drive) from the address identified in the affidavits 

of service. Canbulat added: “My work hours did not permit 

me to leave before 5:00 PM, as I was a salaried employee, 

and in fact I did not leave before 5:00 PM CST on the day in 

question.”

Desiring more information, the district court denied the 

motion without prejudice. The defendants renewed their 

motion and attached two documents to corroborate 

Canbulat’s affidavit: (1) a description of Canbulat’s job at 

Abbvie, including that he worked full-time, Monday 

through Friday, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; and (2) an e-mail 

exchange with a supervisor regarding Canbulat’s request not 

to work on April 11, 2013 (more than a week after the process server says he served Canbulat). The employer had

produced these documents in response to plaintiff Durukan’s subpoena seeking records of the days and hours 

worked by Canbulat in the entire month of April 2013. There 

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was no similar request for the day of the supposed service, 

April 2nd. The defendants argued in their motion that this 

evidence, combined with Canbulat’s affidavit, showed that it 

would have been impossible to serve either defendant as 

claimed because Canbulat was working at Abbvie on April 2, 

2013, at 4:05 p.m. Because neither defendant was served, the 

defendants continued, the district court lacked personal jurisdiction and the default judgment is void.

Without holding a hearing, the district court denied the 

defendants’ renewed motion to vacate the default judgment. 

The court discounted Canbulat’s affidavit as “self-serving.” 

It then explained that the employment records do “not rebut 

the evidence of proper service” because they “in no way reflect that on April 2, 2013 at 4:05 p.m. Canbulat was somewhere other than as reflected by the process server.”

In general we review the denial of a Rule 60(b) motion 

for abuse of discretion, but the review is more searching 

when personal jurisdiction or service of process is being 

challenged for the first time. See Philos Techs., Inc. v. Philos & 

D, Inc., 645 F.3d 851, 854 (7th Cir. 2011); Relational, LLC v. 

Hodges, 627 F.3d 668, 671 (7th Cir. 2010); Homer v. Jones-Bey, 

415 F.3d 748, 753 (7th Cir. 2005). “[I]f the district court lacked 

personal jurisdiction over the defendant at the time it entered the default judgment, the judgment is void, and it is a 

per se abuse of discretion to deny a motion to vacate that 

judgment.” Relational, 627 F.3d at 671 (citations omitted); 

see Philos, 645 F.3d at 855; State St. Bank v. Inversiones 

Errazuriz, 374 F.3d 158, 178 (2d Cir. 2004).

A process server’s affidavit identifying the recipient and 

when and where service occurred is “prima facie evidence of 

valid service which can be overcome only by strong and 

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No. 14-3016 5

convincing evidence.” O’Brien v. R.J. O’Brien & Assocs. Inc., 

998 F.2d 1394, 1398 (7th Cir. 1993) (internal quotation marks 

and citations omitted); Relational, 627 F.3d at 672; Homer, 415 

F.3d at 752. The affidavits of service that named the recipient 

as Mr. Canbulat and placed service on April 2, 2013, at 4:05 

p.m. at Rain Trading’s registered place of business established a prima facie showing. But Durukan is wrong when it 

asserts on appeal that its prima facie showing entitled it to 

have any dispute with its affidavits resolved in favor of jurisdiction. The affidavit of the party asserting personal jurisdiction is presumed true only until it is disputed. Once disputed, the party asserting personal jurisdiction—in this case 

Durukan—must prove what it has alleged. Hyatt Int’l Corp. 

v. Coco, 302 F.3d 707, 713 (7th Cir. 2002); see Philos, 645 F.3d at 

859.

The defendants have presented sufficient evidence to 

dispute the presumption of service. Canbulat’s employment 

records show that he was supposed to be working at another 

location at the time of service and his affidavit asserts that he 

was working there at that time. This combined evidence of 

the employment records showing Canbulat’s expected presence at a distant worksite and his sworn assertion that he 

was actually at that site is more than sufficient to contradict 

the affidavits of service and require a hearing to resolve the 

factual dispute. See Homer, 415 F.3d at 750–51, 757 (conflicts 

between defendant’s and process server’s declarations presented question of fact); Robinson Eng’g Co. Pension Plan & 

Trust v. George, 223 F.3d 445, 448, 452 (7th Cir. 2000) (conflicts 

between defendant’s and service recipient’s affidavits presented factual dispute requiring factual hearing on service of 

process). 

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To resolve the dispute between the conflicting evidence, 

the district court needed to hold an evidentiary hearing. It

erred by ruling that it could just disregard Canbulat’s affidavit. The court discounted the affidavit on the ground that it

was “self-serving,” even though it was based on the affiant’s

own knowledge. In the summary judgment context, “we 

long ago buried—or at least tried to bury—the misconception that uncorroborated testimony from the non-movant 

cannot prevent summary judgment because it is ‘selfserving.’” Berry v. Chicago Transit Auth., 618 F.3d 688, 691 (7th 

Cir. 2010), quoted in Navejar v. Iyiola, 718 F.3d 692, 697–98

(7th Cir. 2013) (reversing summary judgment based on error 

discounting party’s affidavit as “self-serving”); accord, e.g., 

Hill v. Tangherlini, 724 F.3d 965, 967 & n.1 (7th Cir. 2013) (expressly overruling contrary holdings); Darchak v. City of Chicago Bd. of Educ., 580 F.3d 622, 631–32 (7th Cir. 2009); Kaba v. 

Stepp, 458 F.3d 678, 681 (7th Cir. 2006).

Canbulat’s affidavit is self-serving but it flatly contradicts 

the process servicer’s affidavit with specific first-hand observations. He not only denied service but even explained 

where he was at the time of service and how he remembers 

so precisely. The disputed factual issues could not be resolved without an evidentiary hearing: “a determination of 

credibility cannot be made on the basis of an affidavit. That 

is, a judge cannot take two affidavits which swear to opposite things and say, ‘I find one of the affidavits more credible 

than the other, and therefore I shall accept it as true.’” Castillo v. United States, 34 F.3d 443, 446 (7th Cir. 1994); see Franco v. United States, 762 F.3d 761, 764–65 (8th Cir. 2014) (district court abused its discretion by determining that one affidavit was more credible than another without evidentiary 

hearing); Bischoff v. Osceola County, 222 F.3d 874, 882 (11th 

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No. 14-3016 7

Cir. 2000) (district court erred by judging witness credibility 

without holding evidentiary hearing). This general principle 

applies to evidentiary disputes like this one about service of 

process. See Homer, 415 F.3d at 751, 757 (evidentiary hearing 

was necessary where litigants filed dueling affidavits regarding service of process); George, 223 F.3d at 453 (same); Old 

Republic Ins. v. Pacific Fin. Servs., 301 F.3d 54, 57 (2d Cir. 2002)

(“A defendant’s sworn denial of receipt of service, however,

rebuts the presumption of proper service established by the 

process server’s affidavit and necessitates an evidentiary 

hearing.”). Only a live hearing can resolve this factual dispute.

The district court’s denial of defendants’ Rule 60(b) motion is VACATED and the case is REMANDED for further 

proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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