Costumes, Attack Dogs, and the (un)Invisible Woman: All in a Day’s Work

The quality that sets Forest City Filing & Process Serving apart in our industry is our dedication to professionalism. Pineapple Express may be funny movie, but lawyers don’t actually want Seth Rogan involved in navigating civil procedure, filing court documents, or serving individual litigants and corporations. They want trustworthy, competent, and reliable professionals. We are uncompromising when it comes to maintaining these standards.

However, that is not to say that we won’t get a little creative when an opposing party is clearly trying to evade service. The use of costumes (pizza delivery man or construction worker) can and will be used when necessary. Serving litigants at their workplace is often done when a residential address is unknown or if the person refuses to answer at home. Sometimes booking an appointment disguised as a potential customer is the only way to get through the office door. We will do whatever it takes.

We have served parties in jails, prisons, hospitals, housing projects, shelters, and other institutions. We have waited for hours outside of a property, day after day, in a high-stakes game of blink. Our process servers won’t give up, no matter what happens. And things do happen.

A family court respondent once dispatched his rottweiler to attack our process server. A small claims defendant chased and beat another one of our servers on the head with the Statement of Claim (which, he calmly reminded her, was a good way to end up involved in a second civil case…). Two years ago, one lady drove away so fast she struck the same process server with the mirror of her car.

My personal favourite story is of a case I handled myself in 2019. A personal injury firm in California hired us to serve a Plaintiff’s Claim on a Defendant just outside of London. Every time I would go to the person’s home, I could see her clearly through the windows of the home and the front door which had sightlines straight into the kitchen. When I would ring the doorbell, she would simply freeze and stand completely still. It was as if she thought that if she didn’t move, she would become invisible and I wouldn’t see her. I would wait for five or ten minutes, call out to her, say “I can see you, you know”, but she still wouldn’t move. Finally, on the third attempt, and so as not to increase costs for the client, I decided I would wait as long as it took. After about fifteen minutes, she broke tableau, walked nonchalantly to the door, and took the envelope as though nothing strange had just happened.

People often hire us to serve documents and warn us that their ex, or the opposing party, is going to be a nightmare to deal with and will probably evade service. Ninety percent of the time, this isn’t actually true. Most people understand that there is no point in evading service, and generally people want to know what is going on in their life so that they can address it. However, for those special cases involving those special people, Forest City Filing & Process Serving is prepared to do whatever it takes!

Call us at 519-663-0509 or click here to contact us now!