QUESTION
How can we file a small claims court filing if we don't know how to reach the defendant to serve him? Is there some other way to solve this?
Asked on Sep 12th, 2014 on Breach of Contract - Washington
More details to this question:
Our son stole our car. We had allowed him to borrow it for a couple of hours. That was 89 hours ago. We can't file a police report because they say we had a verbal contract so this is supposedly a contract violation, not a criminal matter. They say we need to go to small claims court to have a judge order the car impounded and returned to us. But in Washington State we would be required to serve him the court papers and if we knew where to find him we wouldn't be in this predicament to begin with. We are worried that we are legally liable for whatever he may do in his drug addled state with our car. And in the mean time, until we can get it back, we don't want to be legally liable for another adult's behavior (he is 44 years old).
1 ANSWER
While I'm not familiar with the procedures in Washington, in all Courts in which I practice there is a procedure to get the Court to allow a different method of service, usually through publication in a newspaper, if the defendant can't be served by the usual methods. Usually you have to make some attempts to locate the defendant before the Court will allow you to use another method, but you should check with the clerk of the Court about how to go about this. However, you may not be able to go to small claims court. Again, I don't know the procedures in Washington, but in New York small claims courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, without authority to order equitable relief such as the impounding of a car. Again, check with the clerk of the court. You may have to proceed in a court of general jurisdiction.
Answered on Sep 12th, 2014 at 12:40 PM