Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

If you are getting records of a party to the litigtion, from them, you don't need a subpoena at all. In discovery you just send a request for production, and for trial issue a notice to appear with documents. Notice to consumer does not come into it. I am not able to think of any situation off the top of my head where you would subpoena the personal records of a consumer who is not a party to the lawsuit from the consumer themselves. If for some odd reason you need to do that, however, you would not need the notice to consumer.

You use a subpoena to obtain documents from a third party. If the third party has records that belong to a consumer, you must give notice to the consumer. Personal records of a consumer are defined here: http://law.onecle.com/california/civil-procedure/1985.3.html

There is a time frame to issue the subpoena, and copies must be given to the consumer. When you serve the subpoena on the third party, the notice that you gave the consumer must also be served on the third party. The time limits allow the consumer to object to production of their records.

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