Bogus summons issued to my home!

[AverageCitizen]

Yesterday I went to the post office to retrieve a certified letter. I get the letter and glance at the front of the package. I notice it is from my county's Superior Court and it has a name on it. Let's use Trevor Barnes as the name of the defendant and let's say my name is Thomas Barnes. You can see the similarity in the names.

I open the package up thinking I'm being sued for God know what! At first I suspect it has something to do with my rental properties.

I show it to my wife at home and she freaks out! I freak out!

I then calmly go over the pages in the packet and realize the suit is for an accident that supposedly happened a year ago which I have no recollection of.

I think look at the front of the package and notice the name error on it!

My name is listed in the phone book as "T. Barnes" I strongly suspect this lazy attorney opened the phone book up, saw "T. Barnes" thinking it was Trevor Barnes, and fired off a summons.

I called the court and the attorney's office about the mix up but this really shook me up.

Do I have any options against the lazy attorney for doing this?

 

[dee_dub]

Yes. You can write him a cordial letter and explain you are not the T. Barnes he is looking for.

 

[tpajet]

It may have been laziness on his part, but you would really not have any case against him. Ultimatly it was an error. As said, write a letter explaining that you are not that person, so that the real person does not get a judgemnt or some other such thing against them for failure to appear or a defult judgment for the plantiff. In other words, you need to make sure that they know the person they were looking for has still not been contacted.

 

[AverageCitizen]

Thanks folks! I finally got through to the Superior Court and told them what happened. They told me to package the stuff up and send it back. I'm going to reseal the package and write "Does not live here" on it and put it back in the mail.

Also, the attorney finally called me back. He attempted to make it sound as if he possibly made a mistake but somewhere during his bumbling apology he admitted he did make a mistake.

He said he'd see what he could do about correcting the situation though.

So all is well...unless one find day the cops show up at my home looking for T. Thomas!