Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

Search [skip tracing service]

Yes you need their address, since you must serve them with the complaint in order to sue them. Quite frankly, however, unless they owe you a very large amount of money, your chances of collecting from them without spending more doing it are very slim if they have skipped out to New York.

I must agree with Mr. Stone's advice to look for a skip tracing service. Today, there are so many ways to find people, whether you use your own sources or a professional service.

If you want to try to locate the ex-roommates, yourself, you might try voter registration records, real estate records, social networking sites, and former joint friends. Sometimes, just a Google search turns people up.

Private investigators have access to special search devices, and it is amazing how successful they are at finding people.

Mr. McCormick is right that you must find the debtors to serve them with legal papers, but I do not see any basis for his conclusion that "your chances of collecting from them without spending more doing it are very slim." Is he implying that people in New York do not pay their debts and judgments?

Certainly, you need to evaluate the economic realities of searching for the debtors, proceeding against them in court, and collecting on the judgment, but our legal systems works pretty darned well. Don't be discouraged to use it.