Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

Your subpoena needed to have a date in it for production of the papers. Of course if you aren't an attorney and you did not have the subpoena issued by the court for you, then they never have to comply, since the subpoena would be totally invalid.

As long as the time specified as the production date in the subpoena.

I agree with Mr. McCormick. Additionally, the subpoena would have to be properly served and would have to be issued in a case where you are a party.

Mr. McCormick and Mr. Hoffman are correct. They will ignore it unless it was from a valid case and validly issued by the court. Unless you are represented by an attorney, you have to have the court issue a subpoena in a pending case.

If you have an attorney, and are trying to find out whether or not the date of production specified in the subpoena is correct, then the following rules are helpful. A subpoena for business records issued to an escrow company for escrow files must comply with Code of Civil Procedure section 1985.3. That means you must give notice to all parties to the escrow, with a special notice, or obtain their release of the records. This notice has to be given at least 10 days prior to the time for production, with an additional five (5) days if you serve the notice on the parties by mail.

At that point, you cannot serve the subpoena on the escrow company until at least five (5) days after serving copies of the subpoena and the notice of privacy rights have been served to the parties to the escrow. The subpoena itself must command compliance no sooner than 20 days after issuance of the subpoena or 15 days after service, whichever is later.

If you follow all of the rules, there is no way that the escrow company is obligated to produce records shorter than 20 days after issuance.