A process server lied about serving papers. The problem is that not only he lied, but he wrote a narrative in which he states he was there several times, I ran away from him, and so on. This is absolutely false. If he just lied about serving I would not care, but he is describing me in an absolutely negative light, and I want to take actions about this individual. What can I do? Is there any agency that would take actions against these people who so blatantly lie? Can an official complaint be filed with anybody? What legal recourses do I have? Aren't these people officers of the court, and aren't they guilty of perjury for lying in their affidavit? Can they be charged with perjury? I can easily prove he lied. Thank you for your help.
Practically, almost nothing. Court generally cares only about whether you got due process, i.e. fair notice of the specifics of the case. Process serving is technically done under oath, but it is not a regulated activity at least not in Maryland.
I have seen several situations where process servers lazily blew the expiration date on the summons and even lied. Example: someone my firm sued used to have a location right against Ravens Stadium current location, and sold their property to the Stadium Authority but forgot to update their address with the corporate authorities. We didn't catch the error, our bad, but the process server swore under penalty of perjury that he served the CEO at the old address.
Two problems: 1) the CEO-owner had solid proof that he was off the coast of Alabama with a fishing license, motel reservation and flight plans at the time of the alleged "service", and 2) the server swore he served him, replete with physical description, at an address which no longer exists and is now tailgate parking. Once we figured it out, we confess bad service and reserved, with apologies. Process server - got off no consequences.
Part of what makes process serving fairly cheap is competition, which would not happen as well if there were licenses required.
The Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office has in the past pursued criminal prosecution of private process servers who filed false affidavits. You might contact their office regarding this. In addition, I have written letters to opposing counsel to inform them that the process server they used had lied in their affidavit of service of process. That usually causes the firm to stop using that process server. Eventually, that process server will be out of business. The last thing a law firm wants is to have bad service of process on the people they are serving, which could end up causing judgments to get set aside or vacated, or witnesses not showing up for trial when the lawyer thought they had been served with a subpoena to appear.
