Court Opinion

ID: 9718468
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:24:51.039117+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:59.533078
License: Public Domain

Horney, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion.
The facts and circumstances of this case do not compel a reversal. To me, the evidence was such as to warrant the lower court finding, as it did, that the judgment was void for want of valid service of process on the defendant-appellee. On the one hand, the testimony of the defendant was to the effect that the private process server, on leaving the suit papers with him, told him that they were some sort of record of his accident and that he could turn them over to his insurance company if he wanted to. The defendant further testified that he was never informed, and did not understand, that he had been sued or was a defendant in a law suit. Because he had already been exonerated of having caused the accident, the defendant also stated that what was said by the process server, had the effect of lulling him into a state of complacency for the time being.
On the other hand, the process server testified at some length that he carefully checked the fact that the defendant was the person being sued, that he explained each of the papers, con*303sisting of a copy of the declaration, summons, interrogatories and request for admission of facts, and that he impressed the defendant with the seriousness of the matter and advised him to turn the papers over to his insurer immediately. Yet the attorney for the plaintiff-appellant, before demanding payment of the default judgment obtained while negotiations were in progress with the insurance company for a settlement of the plaintiff’s claim, dispatched a law student to visit the defendant for the purpose of getting a written statement from him to the effect that he had been served with suit papers some three months before, but had not turned them over to his insurance company as he had been instructed to do by the person who had given the papers to him. Five days later, the attorney himself revisited the defendant because he was not satisfied with the statement the law student had taken. On cross-examination the defendant testified that the statement he signed was not as long as the one introduced into evidence.
The rule in Maryland, as the majority points out by citing a number of cases, including Weisman v. Davitz, 174 Md. 447, 199 Atl. 476 (1938), and Little v. Miller, 220 Md. 309, 153 A. 2d 271 (1959), is that the return of service of process is presumed to be true and accurate and a mere denial by a defendant, unsupported by corroborative evidence or circumstances, is not enough to impeach the return of service. But that was not, as the record shows, the situation here. Not only was there testimony to the effect that the defendant had been misinformed and led to believe that the papers the process server left with him were unimportant, which, in my opinion, constituted something more, under the circumstances of this case, than a mere denial of service of process, but there was strong corroboration of the defendant’s testimony in the fact that the plaintiff or her attorney had reason to doubt the propriety of the service of process or else it would not have been expedient for her agent and attorney to subsequently visit the defendant, not once but twice, to obtain statements from him that he had been served with suit papers.
While the delivery of copies of the process and original pleading, see Maryland Rule 104 b (1) and (2), without any explanation would satisfy the rule, a delivery coupled with a *304statement intimating that the suit papers were being delivered not as a notice of the filing of suit but as a record of an accident out of which the suit arose, as was the case here, should not, in my opinion, be accepted as valid service under the rule. Cf. In Re Bonesteel's Will, 228 N. Y. S. 2d 301 (1962). See also Hunstock v. Estate Development Co., 126 P. 2d 932 (Calif. 1942).
The question here is really one of credibility of witnesses and the trial judge chose to believe the defendant. Regardless of any misapplication of the law, it is my opinion that the lower court was not clearly wrong in finding that the presumption in favor of the correctness of the return had been overcome. The order appealed from should be affirmed.