Legal Question in Business Law in California

No named party to the lawsuit, nor any real party in interest, may serve any process in the case. Only unpaid third parties, or paid registered process servers may serve documents in a case. Where a business entity has a registered agent for service of process, you can serve the agent instead of one of the "controll group" of the business entity, but you must serve the agent the same way as you would serve any individual, but specifying in the summons that they are served as the agent for service of process.

And adding to Mr. McCormick's response, the summons and complaint must be personally served, not mailed.

Most other documents after the intial summons and complaint can be served by mail, as long as the Code of Civil Procedure and other applicable local and California Rules of Court are followed. Again, even the documents that are mailed would need to be served by a non-party, as Mr. McCormick advised.

The only disagreement that I have with Mr. McCormick's response is that a third party who is not a registered process server can be paid, but there is a limit or a "cap" on recovering those charges as costs later in the law suit if you do not use a registered process server. As Ms. Darrow points out, if the papers are a summons and complaint, they should be personally served by the third party, not mailed.

I agree with what the other lawyers have said.

You also have the option of mailing a copy of the summons, complaint, etc. to the registered agent along with a notice and acknowledgment of receipt. If the agent signs that form and mails it back to you, you should file it with the court. The company would be deemed served on the day the acknowledgment was signed. The company has an incentive to let the registered agent do this because, if he refuses, you may later be able to recover the cost of serving the agent personally. But the company may refuse; if that happens, you will still have to serve the papers by other means and the company will have had additional time to review your lawsuit. That usually isn't such a big deal, but it's worth considering when you decide what to do.