Serving a Summons with No Address
This is in the state of California in the San Diego area.
My question involves how to serve a Summons if I don't have a residential address?
I am the Plaintiff and the Defendant only shows a PO Box address on their driver's license.
Short Version: The dispute is a car accident. Defendant made an illegal U-Turn in front of me, resulting in my T-boning their vehicle. Their vehicle had dealer plates, therefore, it wasn't registered and does not go through the normal personal insurance policy. I am assuming it is covered until a Commercial insurance policy (Primary), but Defendant has been reluctant to provide the Commercial insurance policy holder and is insistent on going through their personal insurance (Secondary). Luckily, we're both have the same personal auto insurance carrier and the auto insurance carrier (spoke to a manager) states that they are indeed Secondary and are also having difficulty retrieving the actual insurance carrier of the vehicle in question. I cannot get reimbursed by my own policy because I only have Liability.
With the Defendant being reluctant to provide insurance information, it's highly unlikely they'll provide a convenient address for me to have someone serve them. Does anyone have a recommendation on how to serve an individual and obtaining a residential address in which to serve them? I do not personally know this individual, so obtaining a work address or school address would also be difficult. I doubt the family of the Defendant would be cooperative as well.
Suggestions?
Re: Serving a Summons with No Address
No police report was made, such that there's no address on a report of the accident?
If you file a lawsuit, you should be able to subpoena information about the box holder from the USPS or mailbox service. Or you can attempt to serve by certified mail to the post office box, and if that fails request permission for substituted service.
Re: Serving a Summons with No Address
Thanks for the information.
No police report was made. When I called the police to request that they come out (when the accident happened), the operator who I spoke to asked if there were injuries. I responded with No Injuries, but wanted an officer to come out so that I could file a police report.
The response that I received from the operator was that if there were no injuries, they typically don't send out a police car to file a police report.
I found this to be confusing, but did not want to argue with the operator. Also, I had just moved into this city (San Diego) and was not familiar with how this city/county/district operated.
That's another question I was wondering about (whether police are obligated to come out and conduct a police report...) but I can start a separate post for that.
Thanks again for the information.