Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Methods to serve 3 day notice

E-mail is not currently one of the authorized means for service of legal papers.

However, in some situations, courts have held that it is no defense that a defendant was served in an irregular or unauthorized way, if said defendant shows up in court or otherwise admits that he got the message.

Some courts, particularly the Federal courts, have held that where one party has a duty to give notice of some fact to another party, it is more important to follow a method that is reasonably likely to get the job done rather than to adhere rigidly to a method that's prescribed but unlikely to give actual notice to the other. An example might be where a contract says X shall give notice to Y at a particular address. If X knows that Y has moved, should he follow the contract, or use the new address he knows of? (I'd send the notice to both addresses, but are the other choices improper? Courts might differ on the answer).

So, from the landlord's point of view, trying to serve a tenant by e-mail alone is not a good idea, although sending an e-mail message as a back-up to an approved method might be worth while.

From the tenant's point of view, it's a tough call whether to acknowledge getting the message and act on it, or to pretend the e-mail wasn't received, or maybe admit it was received but scoff at it as legally ineffective to give notice. There's danger in each approach. In general, I advise tenants to treat legally improper service as though it were proper, because the serving party will get it right sooner or later, and it's better to face the music and get the matter over with promptly; but I'd be the first to admit this advice isn't the best in 100% of all situations.