Ohio court reverses U.S. Bank foreclosure over defective prisoner service
After certified mail initially failed, a process server left the summons and complaint with the facility’s intake officer on August 16, 2024. The borrower never responded. U.S. Bank obtained default judgment and a foreclosure decree on October 21, 2024. The property sold at sheriff’s sale on April 25, 2025, generating $61,060.07 in excess proceeds.
Those proceeds triggered a separate fight. The borrower claimed them, but a magistrate denied his motion under Ohio Revised Code 2105.19(A), which bars anyone convicted of murder from benefiting by the victim’s death. The excess went to the deceased wife’s estate.
What matters for servicers came next. On April 14, 2026, the borrower filed a motion to vacate the foreclosure decree, arguing he was never properly served and that service fell outside the timeline required by Ohio Civil Rule 3(A).
The trial court denied it without reaching the merits. The borrower had appeared in court multiple times between October 2025 and January 2026 seeking excess funds without raising service. That silence, the court held, was waiver.
The Tenth District disagreed. All of that participation happened after the decree was entered – and timing is everything. If a court lacks personal jurisdiction when it enters judgment, that judgment is “void ab initio” – void from the start, a nullity. Nothing afterward can fix that.
