Legal Question in Constitutional Law in New York

Re: was i legally served??

It's possible, but I would need more information regarding the affidavit of service as well as if there were any prior attempts at service. You cannot simply leave papers at the door, absent a court order, if there were no prior attempts to serve.

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Re: was i legally served??

The short answer is that you need to consult an attorney to ensure you protect your rights as there are many different variables that could determine the answer to your question. First, we need to know the nature of the action or proceeding. A landlord-tenant summary proceeding, for example, will have different, less stringent, service requirements than say an action in State Supreme Court. But assuming this is a regular civil action in State Court, the papers must be served either on you personally or by leaving them with a person of suitable age and discretion at your residence. If the latter is done, a copy must be mailed to you within 24 hours. If, after considerable unsuccessful attempts to get you in person, the process server may in certain circumstances resort to "nail and mail" which means he must "affix" the papers to your door and mail a copy to you within 24 hours. You don't want to be in the unenviable position of having to move to vacate a default judgment, so you should retain counsel and file an answer that raises jurisdictional defenses or, if appropriate, make a pre-answer motion to dismiss the case based on lack of jurisdiction. If you fail to make at least a "special appearance" (announcing the Court that you are appearing in the action but not conceding the Court has personal jurisdiction over you), a default judgment will be entered against you and you will have to spend alot of money to vacate it even though you may have a good basis for doing so. Constitutional law requires in most instances that the process server use due diligence to serve you personally before resorting to one of the alternate methods, but that standard is relaxed for certain types of actions and proceedings.