Court Procedures / Evidence / Service

In general, when a person is filing a motion or certain other legal papers within a court case, the person or his/her lawyer is supposed to serve the other party with a copy of the motion before filing it. And the lawyer or whoever it is who serves the other party is generally supposed to submit an affirmation or affidavit of service swearing that the papers were served. The purpose of serving papers before they are filed is to give the opposing party in the case the chance to read them, and come up with any objections or other response to them. If the papers that were filed in court were not served, or if the papers were incomplete or inaccurate and didn’t accurately reflect the papers that were filed in court, the person who received the papers may be able to tell the judge that service was not properly done. And it may be a reason for the judge to either dismiss the motion or to delay the case so that the motion is properly served.

EDIT THIS ACCORDING TO THE WRITER’S SPECIFIC SITUATION (DELETE THE FIRST SENTENCE IF NEEDED): I know that you said that you didn’t notice that the papers were different until the court hearing was already over. Is there another court date coming up where you may be able to bring this issue up to the judge? If you believe that you were somehow prejudiced (harmed) by not receiving the correct set of papers first, you may want to try to talk to a lawyer as soon as possible to figure out if there is anything that you should file at this point to bring this to the judge’s attention. Or if you believe that you agreed to something or signed something based on looking at the wrong papers, you may want to ask an attorney how to file a motion in court to try to re-open the case. Here is a link for free legal assistance organizations if you want to try to get some advice or representation:LINK