But the bigger threat to Belec's business may not be angry former targets—it's being left behind in a digital age that has little need for in-person anything.
Despite the bad reputation of process servers (which probably wasn't helped by last year's Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg movie Pineapple Express) they're an essential component of the civil court system, says Chris Davis, a Seattle-based personal injury attorney and member of the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association's Board of Governors. Davis says servers actually protect the people who are receiving the legal notices. "Our constitution basically says that a person has a right to be notified and the opportunity to appear and respond to the charges, whether those are criminal charges or civil charges."
Kevin P. Casey
Ron Belec on the job:
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In some cases, Davis says, people attempt to avoid service, hoping that eventually the statute of limitations will run out. Under state law, for example, you have three years to sue someone for damages after a car accident. Even if you don't get the papers into someone's hands, it's still possible to win a judgment against them, but in order to do that, you have to show you've done everything possible to serve them.
In pursuit of their prey, process servers have legal protections and access to extensive troves of personal information. State law exempts them from prosecution for trespassing, and Belec's case answered any doubts about their right to contact anyone necessary to smoke out a defendant in a lawsuit. On top of that, they can tap information maintained by state agencies and database services like LexisNexis. With help from those sources, servers can get everything from someone's current address and cell phone numbers to a Social Security number. Much of that is on public record, but accessing it costs more than most people would spend. LexisNexis, for example, costs anywhere from a few hundred dollars for basic searches to a couple of thousand for more advanced digging.
In Olympia this year, Belec is pushing for the passage of a bill, introduced last month by Senators Joe McDermott (D-Seattle), Adam Kline (D-Seattle), and Mike Carrell (R-Lakewood), that would give servers access to even more information from the state Department of Licensing. Currently, they can get the mailing address a driver uses when registering a vehicle. Belec wants servers also to be able to get the residential address of drivers who receive mail at a post office box. That "makes our life a lot easier," Belec says. At a hearing on the bill last week, McDermott said that people working with domestic violence victims expressed concerns about making physical addresses more readily available.
Even with all that information, and legal stalking privileges, becoming a process server requires only $10 and a signature at the county courthouse. Two years ago, the state processors' association sought to get a state law passed requiring background checks before aspiring servers could be licensed, and creating other oversight as well, says Vennes. But he couldn't find any support in Olympia. The state Board for Judicial Administration didn't want the extra cost and responsibility. The industry hasn't had significant problems with servers abusing their privileges, Vennes maintains. But he is worried that if such abuse were to happen, legislators might take it upon themselves to regulate his business.
Belec first got into the trade in 1987, after 20 years working for U-Haul. He won't discuss details, but in the mid-1980s, while running a U-Haul division in Seattle, he got caught in the middle of a fight between the company founder and his children and was forced out, he says. He bounced between jobs for a while, finally landing at a small process-service firm that was bought a year later by ABC Legal Services and its president Andy Carrigan.
Shortly after starting, Belec says, he impressed his new boss by his willingness to set up a tent and camp outside an evasive target's home until he returned. The move helped cement Belec's reputation as someone willing to do whatever it takes to complete the service.
"He didn't get along with some people, and he had a tendency to be sort of stubborn," Carrigan recalls. But when Carrigan needed to find two women who were the heirs in a million-dollar estate case ABC was handling, he sent Belec to Finland to track them down. Without much to go on, he found them both.
But things soured for Belec after the arrival of Carrigan's son, Steve, a former San Francisco dot-com executive who joined ABC in 2001. The younger Carrigan wanted to make ABC a more electronic firm— not only serving papers but helping law firms with services like online document management. And he wanted to make the process-serving operation more professional, less a matter of chasing people down. "[Belec] and I went to war over the direction of this place," the younger Carrigan recalls.
Carrigan the elder says he felt split between the two, but ultimately blood proved thickest. Steve stayed, and Belec left in 2005 to take over North West Legal, which he bought from Eric Vennes.
One paralegal at a local firm, who asked that her name not be used, says she switched to North West Legal when Belec left ABC because she can depend on him and his servers to find people who have disappeared. He has no qualms about tracking down and calling distant friends and relatives or following associates until they lead him and his servers to his target. The paralegal says that's especially important in cases in which a deadline for service is approaching. "I have people who have disappeared," she says. And she trusts North West Legal will find them. "They do, they track them down."
