Collectors and Process Servers Impacted by New Regulations in New York

The New York City Council adopted and published a new set of rules governing Debt Collectors that became effective April 24, 2010.

These new rules were promulgated by the same body that took on Sewer Service in New York that resulted in arguably the strictest regulations on private process servers in the United States.

Normally I would not write about rules effecting the collectors in New York, but these rules among other things place strict requirements on the collectors to maintain records of the activities of the process servers they contract with.

The following are the relevant sections of the new rules in New York City that will have an impact of process servers that work for debt collectors covered by these rules:

(3) A record of all cases filed in court to collect a debt. Such record shall include, for each case filed, the name of the consumer, the identity of the originating creditor, the amount claimed to be due, the civil court index number and the court and county where the case is filed, the date the case was filed, the name of the process server who served process on the consumer, the date, location and method of service of process, the affidavit of service that was filed and the disposition for each case filed. Such record shall be filed in a manner that is searchable or retrievable by the name, address and zip code of the consumer and the creditors who originated the debts that the debt collection agency is seeking to collect.

(4) The original copy of each contract with a process server for the service of process, and copies of all documents involving traverse hearings relating to cases filed by or on behalf of the debt collection agency. Such records should be filed in a manner that is searchable by the name of the process server.

The entire rules can be found at the following link: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dca/downloads/pdf/debt_collection_agency_law_rules.pdf