Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Service

Nice try. No brass ring. You ignore that service at your own peril. If you don't file either an Answer or appropriate motion, you'll end up with a default against you.

Re: Service

The question is, how much are you going to spend on an attorney to fight service? They'd only be re-served, and you'd have to respond. Since you know about the lawsuit, put together the best defense, assemble all documents, relevant photographs, etc., go to and retain an attorney, and defend yourself.

Re: Service

Maybe. But the question you should be asking instead is whether you are willing to risk a judgment being entered against you based on the blind hope that the crooked process server will not file a proof of service with the court.

If you do not care whether a judgment is entered against you, then you need not be concerned whether service was proper or not. If you do not want a judgment entered against you, then it does not really matter whether service was proper or not, you need to file a response so that a judgment is not entered against you.

You can report the process server to the Department of Consumer Affairs, and it can do an investigation, and potentially take the process server's license away. But in the meantime, I strongly recommend you get your answer filed with the court, before it is too late.

Re: Service

The three previous answers all give extremely practical advice, and I agree. Actually, the law does not require that the papers be HANDED to you or anyone in the house. The wording of the law is that the papers must be "left in the presence of" you or a competent adult member of the household, and that such person must be told, however, briefly, what is being delivered....this gets around situations where the person being served deftly avoids touching the papers. It is OK for the process server to throw them down on the porch, so long as the server has the attention of a member of the household and yells out "you've been served with a lawsuit" or words to that effect.

I repeat, however, that getting too technical and smartypants about whether you can avoid having a valid default judgment entered against you on the ground of defective service is very risky and a gamble that's often lost by the defendant. Other forms of wilful avoidance of service like pretending not to be home or to be someone else usually just prolong the agony as well.

Finally, there are some judges, when told by a defendant that the service was improper, who will retort, "So what, you got them, that's all that matters to me!" Civil cases are a lot less insistent upon by-the-letter procedures than criminal, where, for example, the arresting officer's failure to give a Miranda warning is often (somewhat accurately) depicted as a basis for release of the suspect in TV dramas.