By Julia Rock
For decades, people being sued in New York City civil courts over unpaid debt never learned about the lawsuits against them.
The reason? ‘Sewer service,’ a phrase that refers to an old practice of process servers, or the people hired to hand court documents to defendants, throwing those papers in the sewer rather than delivering them.
While servers may not be literally trashing papers anymore, a New York Focus investigation has found that even after New York City and the state court system implemented reforms to fix the issue, servers are still failing to inform defendants about consumer debt lawsuits against them.
To understand the issue, we reviewed court records, analyzed complaints to regulators, and spoke with consumer attorneys across the city.
Here are five key takeaways from our investigation.
Most People Don’t Respond to Lawsuits Against Them
From 2019 to 2023, defendants only responded to about 17 percent of the 366,000 consumer credit lawsuits brought against them in New York City courts, according to data we obtained through a public records request.
“In my experience, it’s super rare for people to get a court document and just ignore it, because people are afraid of the consequences,” said Elena Rodriguez, an attorney with the New Economy Project, an advocacy group that works on economic justice issues. “It’s serious to be sued, so for only 17 percent of people to answer … I think it points strongly to sewer service.”
Process Servers Sometimes Make Implausible Claims
Servers have to submit affidavits to the court confirming that they successfully reached a defendant or made the required attempts.
But sometimes those affidavits describe impossible scenarios: A review of recent lawsuits shows servers claiming to have served two addresses miles apart within minutes, or to have served a person who doesn’t exist.
New York Focus also reviewed the cases of people who called the New Economy Project’s New York City Financial Justice Hotline for help. In some cases, according to callers, the servers’ affidavits contained clearly inaccurate physical descriptions of them. One claimed to have served a woman, though the defendant was a man; another claimed to have served a white person when the defendant was Black. And in one case, a defendant was on an airplane when the affidavit of service alleged he was handed court papers.
Despite Reforms, Fraudulent Practices Persist
In 2010, New York City tried to tackle the problem. The city agency that regulates process servers imposed new requirements: Servers had to take a licensing test, maintain electronic logbooks of their service, and carry a GPS tracker.
A few years later, the state court system announced reforms requiring creditors to provide more evidence when suing for unpaid debts and a new court policy to mail defendants a notice of the lawsuit against them.
Some attorneys who work on consumer issues told New York Focus they thought the changes had led to minor or even substantial improvements in service. But others said the problem has worsened, because regulators and judges tasked with monitoring it became less vigilant as a result. And they said process servers have figured out how to bypass the regulations.
“It didn’t get better,” said Shanna Tallarico, formerly the project director of the consumer protection unit at the nonprofit New York Legal Assistance Group. “The lies just changed.”
A federal lawsuit that the group filed alleged two process servers had visited defendants’ addresses to maintain their GPS records, but failed to actually serve anyone.
Limited Enforcement Doesn’t Stop Bad Actors
The city department that licenses process servers can also fine them or suspend a license if servers break the rules. But consumer attorneys say the agency’s efforts are too infrequent and the penalties are too small to ensure compliance with the rules.
Judges can also investigate claims that people haven’t been served properly by holding a “traverse hearing,” a court proceeding wherein a judge investigates whether a party was properly served. If it turns out they weren’t, the judge can dismiss the case. But judges rarely hold the hearings: Between 2019 and 2024, New York City judges held 656 traverse hearings out of the 434,000 consumer credit cases filed in those years.
New York Focus spoke with process server Benjamin Lamb, who has been serving papers for a quarter century. In that time, he has been fined at least $2,125, had his license suspended twice, and been found to have engaged in improper service in multiple traverse hearings. He’s also been sued at least two times. And he’s still working.
The Stakes Are High
When consumers aren’t served, they have no chance to challenge erroneous debt collection attempts, get a lawsuit dismissed, or reach a settlement.
When that happens, creditors win by default by getting court orders — called default judgements — that allow them to garnish the wages of defendants who don’t know they’ve been sued.
These default judgments “can throw a person, can throw a family into financial turmoil, all because the process server didn’t properly notify the consumer that there was a lawsuit against them,” said Ted Mermin, executive director of the UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice.
Between 2019 and 2024, New York City courts issued roughly 152,000 default judgments against consumers.