Rudy Giuliani spent a week desperately dodging being served a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems after publicly suggesting he welcomed the legal challenge, the New York Daily News reported Monday evening.
A source told the Daily News that lawyers for the voting technologies company had hired process servers to hand Giuliani its hefty 107-page lawsuit after the lawyer for former President Donald Trump had ignored requests to accept it via email.
“After not responding to requests to waive service, Mr. Giuliani evaded in-person service of process for nearly a week,” said Tom Clare, an attorney for Dominion. “It took numerous attempts, at both his home and office, before we were able to successfully serve Mr. Giuliani on February 10.”
The voting machine company had accused Giuliani, a well-documented promoter of Trump’s false election conspiracy theories, of damaging its reputation by spreading lies at legislative hearings, in the conservative news media and elsewhere, that the voting machine manufacturer had plotted to flip votes to President Joe Biden. Dominion has requested damages of $1.3 billion.
“The amount being asked for is, quite obviously, intended to frighten people of faint heart,” Giuliani wrote in a text message statement.
While Giuliani has publicly threatened to counter sue, alleging “intimidation,” and has even appeared to welcome the trial, a more private look into his efforts to dodge being served the suit paints a more desperate image of the attorney seeking to avoid litigation.
In a detailed account of efforts to serve Giuliani, a source told the Daily News that a doorman had locked the door to the building whenever Giuliani entered the lobby, knowing that process servers were looking for the Trump lawyer.
According to the Daily News, on Feb. 7, Giuliani hopped into the passenger seat of an SUV and tried to quickly close the SUV door as a process server lunged forward with a bag full of documents that got lodged between the door.
“This is not the way it’s supposed to be done. You should have gone to my office,” Giuliani said, according to the account.
A driver for Giuliani and the doorman pulled the bag of papers free from the SUV door so that Giuliani could close it and the process server placed the bag in front of Giuliani’s building, which the doorman had locked, saying, “these documents now belong to Giuliani.”
But, according to the Daily News’ reporting, the process server saw a maintenance worker toss the bag into a street trash can. After fishing for the bag of documents in the trash, the process server continued to pursue Giuliani for the next two days at his office and apartment building.
Staff at Giuliani’s office ignored messages to set up an appointment to hand off the suit.
An assistant for Giuliani finally concluded the chase by accepting service on his behalf on Feb. 10.
