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Municipal Court now offers private carrier service for civil cases
KEITH ARNOLD
Special to the Legal News
Published: December 2, 2024
Franklin County Municipal Court Clerk Lori Tyack said she is optimistic about the court’s decision to offer FedEx commercial-carrier service for civil cases filed in the local court.
The “additional tool,” as she calls it, already has resulted in service being perfected at a far greater rate than service by certified mail in recent years.
“We were down to about a 20 percent success rate in service with certified mail during (the pandemic),” Tyack said, noting that certified mail’s success rate has remained at that low level ever since.
She reported a 70 percent success rate based on the 300 cases for which service by commercial carrier FedEx was used since late August.
“It’s been a long time coming,” she said. “We’ve been working with our case management vendor and FedEx to integrate it, so that we can make the process more efficient.”
Tyack was introduced to the idea of using a commercial carrier, such as FedEx, by several smaller municipal courts in the northern part of the state.
“FedEx actually makes service attempts three different times, whereas certified mail usually is once,” she said.
In the circumstance in which a postal worker is unable to obtain the signature of the intended recipient of certified mail, the postal worker leaves a notice of the delivery attempt, she explained.
“You don’t often get that second chance to receive the certified mail and you have to go to the post office and ask for it in person and show your ID,” Tyack added.
In the event service isn’t perfected by certified mail, the court will next send the notice by regular mail, she said.
“With FedEx and the 70 percent success rate, there’s no need to send regular mail and spend extra resources for (court personnel) to produce the mail and pay for the postage to send it out a second time,” Tyack said. “Going from a 20 percent to 70 percent success rate indicates there will be some savings.”
Tyack also noted the ability to track FedEx deliveries, unlike certified mail.
Deborah Comery, clerk of the Rocky River Municipal Court, initially contracted with FedEx on behalf of the association representing Ohio’s municipal and county court clerks, she explained.
“She wanted all of us to take advantage of the pricing,” Tyack said. “Because we’re courts, we get a little bit better pricing than the private sector and (Comery) was able to make that contract open for all of us to be able to sign onto and to use.”
Priced at $15, service by FedEx is $5 more than certified-mail service, according to the municipal court cost schedule.
“That’s quite an improvement for $5 more and I think it’s worth it,” she said.
Tyack said she recently met with the court’s traffic violations division director leadership to discuss the possibility of switching to FedEx with regard to issuing summons.
“We are taking a good hard look at changing from certified mail to FedEx just because we get a better return,” she said.
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