App Tracks Document Delivery in 2 States
View a video about CivilMap.
Mike Kingery and Tyrel Lasley, process servers in Montrose, Colo., are using iPhone technology to move an often troublesome part of the legal practice into the 21st century. Their software program and iPhone app, called CivilMap, is designed to bring efficiency and certainty to the process of serving a Colorado or Utah defendant.
CivilMap creates a GPS-enabled route to the defendant’s home or business for the process server to follow. Servers can record their conversations with the subject or make time- and date-stamped recordings of the attempt to effect service, while location is verified by GPS. And CivilMap can generate affidavits of service, saving time and reducing the chances of a so-called “gutter serve,” where the server never actually makes delivery but fills out the affidavit as if he did.
Ryan Callahan, a partner at Conerly, Callahan & Lange in Montrose, says the program is a needed improvement in the practice of law.
“We feel much more secure knowing that the affidavits of service coming out couldn’t be questioned in a court of law,” Callahan says. “They are date- and time-stamped, and you know everything’s been done on the up and up.”
Last year, then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sued to vacate 100,000 default judgments due to faulty affidavits of service and ordered the owner of a process serving firm arrested and charged with felonies.
