Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

Re: default procedure

If the defendant was outside California, service by certified mail is sufficient and you don't need the Notice and Acknowledgment of Receipt at all.

If the defendant is in California, the situation is different. Mailing the Notice and Acknowledgment of Receipt is *not* a means of serving the defendant unless she cooperates by signing the form and returning it to you. If she doesn't, then she hasn't been served and you have to go about it another way.

The advantage to you of having used the Notice and Acknowledgment procedure is that, after she has been served, you can get a court order requiring her to reimburse you for the expenses you reasonably incurred. If she tries to evade service and you need an investigator to find her and then need to have your process server stake out her location in order to serve her personally, she can be made to pay for all of that. (If you don't need to go to such extremes and do it anyweay, you will be stuck with the bill.)

The defendant's incentive to cooperate and return the Acknowledgment of Receipt to you is to save the hassle of being served another way and to avoid the costs I just mentioned. Many defendants cooperate with this procedure, realizing that they will be served one way or another and that there is no point in forcing the plaintiff to jump through hoops which the defendant will have to finance later.

The clerk won't enter a default until at least the 31st day after the defendant has been served. Your defendant hasn't been served at all yet, so the clerk was correct to deny your request.

Re: default procedure

The notice and acknowledgement asks the defendant to agree to being served by mail -- if the def. agrees, defendant signs the acknowledgement and mails it back to you; if you don't get that, you have to pay someone to serve him/her by hand -- and recover the costs of doing that from the defendant because the defendant refused to sign the notice and acknowledgement. You have not served the complaint properly, and the def. has not agreed to accept the complaint by mail -- NO, the certified mail receipt does not help you any. To begin the time for default, you have to have proper service.

Re: default procedure

Acknowledgment and receipt not required to be returned, however, they can. Law requires attempts at personal service with declaration from licensed server if not able to serve, then service by mail, then if not respond, court may give you default.