Council Approves Legislation to Hold Process Servers Accountable

clipped from www.nytimes.com Council Approves Legislation to Hold Process Servers Accountable By KAREN ZRAICK It is a fairly unglamorous and lightly regulated task: serving legal papers to people who have been sued. Debt collection agencies and lawyers often farm out the work to private companies, which deliver the papers in person or by mail. They are known, in legal parlance, as process servers. But, according to the City Council, too many of them have been shirking their duties. So on Thursday, the Council overwhelmingly passed a bill that aims to stop what members called a growing and alarming trend: instances in which the papers never reach their intended destination, leaving people unaware that they are being sued.