COVID has brought many challenges to businesses and individuals over the last year, and access to the courts has been one of them. Though we opened our firm, Nardiello Law, just this year, we have been successful in convincing federal judges to protect or enforce our clients’ rights in federal courts around the United States.
In Yellow City Remodeling v. Yellow City Construction, No. 2:20-CV-178-Z, a federal court judge in Texas granted our client’s motion to set aside a default judgment against the company when the plaintiff failed to properly serve the client with the lawsuit via certified mail. That is, the plaintiff did send the mail via certified mail service, but the U.S. Postal Services filled out the green return receipt card showing “COVID19” in the space where the complaint was supposedly delivered. Furthermore, the “Received By” portion of the card was signed, “USPS Rep.” This was enough to convince the court that our client did not actually receive the complaint. Therefore, the court vacated the default against our client.
In addition, in two separate cases, we convinced federal judges to permit our clients to serve lawsuits untraditionally—via email. The two cases are MaxRelief USA Inc. v. Maxx Relief, et al., No. CV-20-08335-PCT-MTL Dist. Ariz. 2021) and MaxRelief USA, Inc. v. O’Maley, No. 3:21-cv-00579-N (N.D. Tex. 2021). In both cases, the defendants were avoiding in-person service, despite repeated efforts. In the Arizona Federal District Court case, Judge Liburdi followed Ninth Circuit law and recognized that “…due process requires ‘nothing more’ than service of process by email when that [is] the only means reasonably calculated to apprise the defendant of the lawsuit.” Both lawsuits were allowed to be commenced against both defendants.
We are specially equipped to handle U.S. federal court cases around the country—even during these unpredictable times. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about federal court representation.