Beware! It's Easy To Serve Non-California Companies

Here’s another way California is different, and out-of-state companies have to be wary.

Code of Civil Procedure section 415.40 provides that:

A summons may be served on a person outside this state in

any manner provided by this article or by sending a copy of the

summons and of the complaint to the person to be served by

first-class mail, postage prepaid, requiring a return receipt.

Furthermore, under section 416.10,

A summons may be served on a corporation by delivering a

copy of the summons and the complaint by any of the following

methods:

(a) To the person designated as agent for service of process. . . .

(b) To the president, chief executive officer, or other head of

the corporation, a vice president, a secretary or assistant

secretary, a treasurer or assistant treasurer, a controller or chief

financial officer, a general manager, or a person authorized by the

corporation to receive service of process.

Therefore, if a non-California company is sued in a California court, it can be served with the summons and complaint simply by mailing copies, certified mail, return receipt requested, to the president of the company.

A new decision, Cruz v. Fagor America, holds that service is complete, and a default judgment can be taken, even if the addressee never sees the documents!

The decision is thirty pages long, but the essence is this: Defendant was a seventeen-employee company in New Jersey. The plaintiff sued for injuries allegedly caused by the defendant’s product, and mailed the papers to the company’s president in New Jersey, return receipt requested. As in most companies, the president didn’t pick up the mail himself, but had a clerk who regularly did so. The clerk signed the receipt. The president never saw the lawsuit. The plaintiff took a default judgment for $276,000. After the trial court set aside the default, the Court of Appeal reversed: service was complete ten days after the papers were mailed. The clerk was authorized to receive service. Her signature proved they had been received. What happened to the papers thereafter was irrelevant.

Comments

[Deoxy]

And, as in so many other ways, California declares war on the other 49 states...

There really is no escape, is there? I mean, even if I nveer sold my product in the state at all, it wouldn't prevent someone from buying it somewhere else and then suing me there...