Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Small Claims Court Serving/Filing

The LLC and its owner are two different legal persons. If you have a claim against the LLC, you must sue the LLC. If you have a claim against a person who just happens also to own an LLC, you sue the person. If the claim potentially could be enforced against both the person and the LLC, it would be wise to name both in the complaint and serve both.

Knowing whether a particular claim can be asserted only against the business organization (corporation, LLC, partnership or whatever), or whether it can (or must) be asserted against an individual shareholder, member, director, officer, partner, agent, etc. is one of the things lawyers are supposed to learn in law school. It can be tricky. If in doubt, it is better practice to sue any party that you have some reason to believe may be liable on your claim, and let them defend if they're not. Don't sue parties against whom you have no possible theory of liability; that could be malicious prosecution.

Finally, you could re-ask your question on LawGuru and give the facts underlying your proposed suit, and maybe someone will step in with a more situation-specific answer.

By the way, the name of an LLC is not a DBA; an LLC can use a DBA but if it does business under the name appearing on its organizational documents filed with the Secretary of State, i.e. its official name, that name is not fictitious, it is real.