For years, the job of serving court papers was often viewed as a prized political plum, handed out by those with clout as a reward for a precinct well worked.
Process servers typically reported to work three days each week, picked up a batch of eviction notices and orders of protection they were to serve, and hit the streets. Their short hours and the 100 gallons of gasoline a month provided by the county, gave some the opportunity to pull in a second paycheck to augment their $24,000 to $35,000 county salaries.
For those who were diligent, it could be a tough–sometime dangerous–job, delivering crucial court papers in the city’s toughest neighborhoods. For others, the job was a pleasant interlude that sometimes resulted in ghost-payrolling charges.
But for the 200 persons who now work as civil process servers, the job is definitely changing–albeit not without controversy and conflict.
A bitter fight over new work rules imposed June 1 has Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan at odds with many of those 200 deputies who serve court summons and other papers vital to the functions of the county court system.
Sheahan, in what he called an attempt to regain control over how those employees operate, issued an order effective June 1, requiring those deputies to sign in and out each day, pick up a day’s supply of court orders and work prescribed shifts.
“I have a department of 6,500 people,” Sheahan said. “I want everybody to work 8 hours . . . and be accountable. What we’re asking is them to do what all their fellow employees do.”
The union representing the summons servers responds that the new regulations will result in more time spent on paperwork and commuting than out on the street serving summons. “This is a terrible injustice to everybody,” said Jerry De Francisco, business representative for Teamsters Local 714.
Since June 1, the union has lost a lawsuit against Sheahan over the changes, at least 15 deputies have retired and 77 others have taken periods of sick leave, prompting Sheahan to seek an investigation by the county’s Inspector General and to threaten criminal charges against anyone abusing the sick-leave policy.
The union–which took out ads last summer asking “Do You Know Where Your Summons Is?”–says there’s now a backlog of unserved summons that exceeds 7,000 at one courthouse location alone.
“What’s hitting the fan now is the papers aren’t going anywhere and this is exactly what we told them,” De Francisco said. Without the proper service of summons and other legal documents, lawsuits can’t start, witnesses don’t appear and evictions are derailed.
Byron Eisenstein, a Chicago attorney whose practice involves landlord-tenant law, agrees there’s been a problem in recent months with summons service, which has become a “sore spot” with many lawyers.
But officials in the sheriff`s office say more time is needed, given the retirements and sick leaves of the past summer. They say that during the summer of 1996, about 68 percent of the 113,521 summonses filed were served successfully. For the the summer of 1997, after the changes were implemented, the successful service rate dropped to around 63 percent.
Circuit Court Judge Brent Carlson, supervising judge for the 1st Municipal District, said if there are major problems with summons being served “it hasn’t come to our attention.”
While the two sides disagree over the impact on the courts, there is no disagreement that life for the deputies has changed dramatically.
Under the old system, they reported to courthouses throughout the county several mornings a week to pick up summonses they could seek to deliver over a period of time at just about any time of the day or night. The process servers said that increased the chances for successful service.
“Even if he went out for a gallon of milk and decided now is the time to serve some papers, he could do it,” De Francisco said of the those who formerly worked the same part of the city or county on a steady basis, becoming familiar with the areas and more efficient.
But with those freedoms came abuses by some, according to Sheahan.
When he was elected sheriff in November 1990, he said there were 335 process servers in a unit that was budgeted for 197. Some were hard workers, according to Sheahan–with one delivering up to 400 summons a month on the South Side–while a “guy in the Loop tied to the 1st Ward” served only 10 a month.
“It was just unbelievable,” Sheahan said. “Some were ghosts (payrollers); some did absolutely nothing.”
Sheahan trimmed the size of the unit back to around 200 and then issued his order for process servers to begin working rotating 8-hour shifts, punch in and out, turn in their papers at the end of each shift and work different areas each day.
The deputies sued, alleging the order changed the conditions of their contract with the county without proper union negotiations.
While the courts ultimately ruled in Sheahan’s favor, the decision has not quieted claims by some of the deputies that the changes have hindered their work.
One deputy, who asked not to be identified, said he now spends 5 hours out of every 8-hour shift doing something other than serving court papers: commuting to and from the courthouse where he picks up the summons each day to the area where he is assigned to deliver them, the paperwork involved and his lunch hour.
But Sheahan says all he is asking members of that unit to do is to follow the same work rules as do other sheriff’s department staffers.
“Some of them are good,” said Sheahan. “But there are always some that are big crybabies, and they don’t like it.”
