CITREXSA, S.A., GAXHUSA, S.A., SERGIO DE LA PENA AND RAMIRO URBINA, APPELLANTS,
v.
SAMUEL LANDSMAN, INDIVIDUALLY, AND LANDSMAN PACKING CO., INC., APPELLEES
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Appellants, Mexican residents, were lured to Florida under the pretense of settlement negotiations, only to be served with a lawsuit. The court reversed the denial of their motion to quash service, holding that service obtained through fraudulent inducement to enter the jurisdiction is void.
Service of process is void if obtained by inveigling or enticing a person into the territorial jurisdiction through fraud, deceit, trickery, or artifice. Here, appellees' conduct—filing the complaint, issuing the summons, changing the meeting location, and arranging service before the conference—demonstrates they never intended good faith settlement negotiations and used the conference as a mere artifice to serve appellants.
[1] Service of process is void if obtained by inveigling or enticing the person to be served into the territorial jurisdiction of the court by means of fraud, deceit, tricker…
[2] A settlement conference can be considered an artifice to serve process if the party arranging the conference never intended to participate in good faith negotiations.
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“Personal service is void if obtained by inveigling or enticing the person to be served into the territorial jurisdiction of the court by means of fraud and deceit, actual or legal, or by trick or device, and in such case defendant is not required to appear or defend.”
Establishes the governing legal standard for voidness of service based on fraudulent inducement.
Previewing 1 of 3 key quotes on this case — the court’s exact language, pinpointed for members.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligenceAppellants and appellees agreed to meet in Florida to conduct settlement negotiations regarding a commercial dispute. Before appellants arrived, appel…
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BASKIN, Judge.
Appellants seek reversal of a non-final order denying a motion to quash service of process. Appellants, residents of Mexico, contacted appellees in order to conduct settlement negotiations concerning an unresolved commercial dispute. The parties agreed to meet in Florida. Prior to appellants’ arrival, appellees filed a complaint and procured a summons. At appellees’ suggestion, the meeting location was changed from appellees’ office to appellees’ counsel’s office. Before the conference began, a deputy sheriff served appellants with the complaint and summons. Appellants filed a motion to quash service. The court denied the motion. We reverse.
Appellants contend that the service of process is void because it was obtained by fraud and deceit, trickery or artifice. Ap-pellees respond that the trial court properly denied the motion to quash service because they did not make an affirmative misrepresentation that appellants would not be served with service of process and because appellants themselves initiated the settlement meeting in Florida.
Personal service is void if obtained by inveigling or enticing the person to be served into the territorial jurisdiction of the court by means of fraud and deceit, actual or legal, or by trick or device, and in such case defendant is not required to appear or defend. So, service is void if obtained by securing defendant’s presence within the jurisdiction by means of criminal process, or by pretense of settlement, whether the matter of settlement was first broached by plaintiff or defendant.
72 C.J.S. Process § 47 (1987); see Mallin v. Sunshine Kitchens, Inc., 314 So. 2d 203 (Fla. 3d DCA 1975), cert. denied, 330 So. 2d 22 (Fla.1976).
In the case before us, appellants arranged the conference in a good faith attempt to settle their dispute with appellees. They traveled to Florida in reliance on appellees’ agreement to attend the conference. Appellees’ conduct, including filing the complaint, causing the summons to be issued, changing the location of the meeting, and arranging service prior to the start of the settlement conference, clearly demonstrates that appellees never intended to participate in good faith settlement negotiations, and that their agreement to participate in the settlement conference was merely an artifice to serve appellants. See Mallin; Buchanan v. Wilson, 254 F. 2d 849 (6th Cir.1958); K Mart Corp. v. Gen-Star Indus. Co., 110 F.R.D. 310 (E.D.Mich.1986); E/M Lubricants, Inc. v. Microfral, S.A. R.L., 91 F.R.D. 235 (N.D.Ill.1981); Sunshine Kitchens, Inc. v. Alanthus Corp., 65 F.R.D. 4 (S.D.Fla.1974); Commercial Bank & Trust Co. v. District Court of Fourteenth Judicial Dist. in and for Tulsa County, 605 P. 2d 1323 (Okla.1980); see also Coyne v. Grupo Industrial Trieme, S.A., 105 F.R.D. 627 (D.D.C.1985). But see Tope v. Beal, 98 F. 2d 548 (3d Cir.1983); Oden Optical Co. v. Optique DuMond, Ltd., 268 Ark. 1105, 598 S.W. 2d 456 (Ark.Ct.App.1980).
Accordingly, we reverse the order under review and remand with directions to enter an order quashing service.
Reversed and remanded.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
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Cited By
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Lisa, S.A. v. Gutierrez, 806 So. 2d 557 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002)…, Lisa played a pre-recorded CD-ROM, at the end of which Lisa announced that it had decided to sue the defendants. At that point, the process servers entered the room and served the defendants. The trial court found that Citrexsa, S.A. v. Landsman, 528 So. 2d 517 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988) mandated quashing the service of process on the individual defendants. Lisa attempts to distinguish Citrexsa on the basis that it (1) acted in good faith; (2) the meeting was not a settlement forum but a shareholders’ meeting; and…
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Williams v. Brown, 622 So. 2d 194 (Fla. 4th DCA 1993)…at the office of counsel for the appellee mortgagee. Appellant, a Florida resident, relies on cases in which personal service has been quashed where the person served was enticed into the jurisdiction by fraud or deceit. Citrexsa, S.A. v. Landsman, 528 So. 2d 517 (Fla. 3d DCA 1988), and cases cited therein. We conclude that since appellant is a Florida resident, the fact that she may have been lured to a meeting to be served is not a basis on which service should be quashed. Schwarz v. Artcraft Silk Hosiery…
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Conax Fla. Corp. v. Astrium Ltd., 499 F. Supp. 2d 1287 (M.D. Fla. 2007)…cess upon Giobbe is insufficient because the plaintiff accomplished service by luring him into Florida under the guise of settlement negotiations, which is a tactic prohibited by Florida law (Doc. 4, p. 6). Thus, in Citrexsa, S.A. v. Landsman, 528 So.2d 517 (Fla.App.1988), service of process was quashed after the defendants, who traveled from Mexico to Florida to attend a settlement conference, were served with process prior to the mediation. The court found that the plaintiffs’ conduct demonstrated th…
Authorities Cited
- Tope v. Beal, 98 F.2d 548 (3d Cir. 1938)
- Buchanan v. Wilson, 254 F.2d 849 (6th Cir. 1958)
- Mallin v. Sunshine Kitchens, Inc., 314 So. 2d 203 (Fla. 3d DCA 1975)