CALAIS, Maine — A meeting of local lawyers, the Washington County sheriff and city councilors to discuss complaints about the costs and methods of delivering court documents ended in disarray Thursday night, with participants trading barbs and no resolution of the matter reached.
The discussion took place during a regular, twice-monthly City Council meeting. It came in response to a letter signed by eight lawyers who practice law in Calais and delivered to the City Council on Nov. 12 complaining about delays and costs of civil service, and the delivery by sheriff’s deputies of court documents related to divorces, bankruptcies, credit card debts, child custody issues, foreclosures or summonses, among others.
The letter stated that service of documents in the Calais area often is made by a deputy from another part of the county rather than a local, Calais-based deputy, resulting in higher costs for the attorneys’ clients. Sometimes the additional travel costs are $30 to $40, according to the letter.
Washington County Sheriff Donnie Smith explained Friday that three deputies in Washington County now are specially assigned to serve civil documents. One deputy each is assigned to the northern, eastern and western sectors of the county, and they live in Princeton, East Machias and Addison.
The deputies serve the paperwork five days a week and are subcontractors. They receive no county benefits and do not answer criminal complaints.
Smith said delays are not happening since deputies do not get paid for the service until service is made. He suggested that in some cases, deputies have difficulties finding the person to be served.
“Sometimes a deputy has to make two or three trips to attempt service because the person knows he is coming and they hide,” Smith said. “The deputy can’t help that.”
Calais lawyer John Churchill signed the letter but was unable to attend Thursday’s meeting.
“I can tell you the problems associated with civil service are worse today than ever, and the sheriff is totally uncooperative,” Churchill said Friday. “I can get papers served in Phoenix, Ariz., cheaper than I can in Calais, Maine.”
Churchill said he had papers served in a domestic case in November. The papers served in Penobscot County cost $18. The papers served in Calais cost $86. The costs included the service fee and the deputy’s travel costs.
“Calais is the center of this part of the state. There should be a deputy to serve papers in Calais, not in Princeton, 20 miles away,” he said.
Smith said that 1,847 papers have gone through the county’s civil process division so far in 2009. He said that only 40 of those papers came from the Calais attorneys, just 2 percent of service.
“No one else has complained,” Smith told the council Thursday. “I don’t know what else I can do. If only [2] percent has a problem, I don’t know how I can correct that and upset the apple cart with the rest.”
Smith said the Calais City Council was very gracious to him at Thursday’s meeting, but he took umbrage with the attorneys going to the City Council rather than coming to him with their complaints.
“I see these attorneys all the time in the courthouse and not one has expressed any problems,” he said.
The letter, signed by lawyers Joseph Cassidy, John A. Churchill, David J. Fletcher, Dan Lacasse, Dennis L. Mahar, David Mitchell, John Mitchell and Teresa Stepan, and sent to the City Council, said in part: “We are required by law to have a sheriff or sheriff’s deputy serve a summons and certain other legal documents. The Washington County Sheriff’s Department has a policy that all items for service be sent to the Sheriff’s Department in Machias and then they distribute those items to a deputy for service.”
The letter goes on to say there have been “lengthy delays in service, often up to a month or more before a return of service is made.”
Smith said Friday that those claims are untrue. “We have a seven- to 10-day turnaround on civil service,” he said.
During Thursday’s meeting, Councilor Joseph Cassidy, who was acting as mayor in the absence of Mayor Vinton Cassidy, and who also is a lawyer and signed the original letter of complaint, called Smith’s attitude “confrontational.”
Smith said he was just defending his office.
He said that since Cassidy had signed the letter, Cassidy’s chairing the meeting and leading the discussion were a clear conflict of interest.
Cassidy did not return calls from the Bangor Daily News on Friday.
Smith on Friday was in the process of scheduling a luncheon for all county attorneys in order to revive the dialogue.
“We will discuss any civil issue they have,” he said. “If someone has a better idea than what we are currently doing, we’ll listen. If someone can prove that a deputy has cheated them, there will be an investigation.”
No date has been set for the luncheon.