Belec isn't worried about the online campaign against him. He says that when people accuse him of going too far to get documents served, it only helps his reputation as a man willing to do whatever it takes to finish the job.
Steve Carrigan prefers a more genteel approach. ABC's headquarters, a few blocks east of the King County Courthouse, has the contemporary look of a "knowledge worker" office, with employees propped up on exercise balls at their desks in an open, airy space that was formerly a Chinese theater. Carrigan says he wants to "bring this industry out of the boiler room and clean up the image."
Kevin P. Casey
Ron Belec on the job:
Please don’t shoot the
messenger.Please don’t shoot the
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To that end, he discourages his servers from banging on doors (he prefers polite knocking), stalking targets, or tricking people into opening the door. (Seth Rogen's character in Pineapple Express dresses up in costumes to get a response from his targets. In a similar vein, Belec once had a server pretend to be a john to get a woman he knew to be a prostitute to answer the door to accept papers in a lawsuit.) Carrigan also gives his servers little "Do Not Disturb"–style door hangers that explain to residents the importance of responding to lawsuits, in the hopes of avoiding long stakeouts and shouting matches.
But even Carrigan's approach doesn't prevent controversy. Last October, when a pair of former State Supreme Court justices filed a lawsuit alleging campaign-finance violations on the part of Dino Rossi's supporters, an ABC worker went to Issaquah to deliver a subpoena to the Republican gubernatorial candidate's home. The next day the Rossi campaign expressed its outrage in a press release, complaining that the plaintiffs' "classless operation" had served papers to Dino's "underage, teenage daughter."
"I don't know what he's complaining about," says Carrigan. "He got the service and that's the intent."
Knoll Lowney, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the case, points out that, by law, a subpoena for testimony can actually just be left on someone's front stoop. Ringing the doorbell and handing it over in person was just a courtesy, he says.
Despite a digital culture that is busily killing off whole industries and giving rise to new ones, the legal profession remains very paper-dense. Stacks of file cabinets fill legal offices. At trial, lawyers still haul around carts of three-ring binders with photos and documents necessary to make their case. Armies of messengers and servers traverse the city on bikes or in cars to get notices to clients, signatures from attorneys, and papers officially filed at the courthouse.
"You've got a profession that is very used to documenting things, having people sign documents that they can hold in their hands," says Glenn Garnes, a former attorney who started a company aimed at making the legal business more electronic.
Both North West Legal and ABC make about a quarter of their revenue from messenger services. But that's starting to change. The federal court system recently started requiring attorneys to file documents online, and King County Superior Court will do the same in June. When that happens, Belec says, "a messenger will become as rare as a dodo bird."
The biggest potential blow to both companies would be the digitization of process service itself. Chris Davis says he doesn't expect to see that anytime soon. It would be very difficult to prove that someone actually received and viewed an e-mail.
But a ruling two months ago in Australia has Vennes nervous. There, a judge allowed an attorney for a firm in a mortgage-default case to serve the defendants through Facebook. The judge allowed it because Facebook accounts, unlike e-mail, include photos and other identifiers that make it easier to show that you sent the notice to the right person. Vennes is quick to note that Australian case law has no bearing on the way things are done in the U.S., but it is a first step toward putting the service business online. "That's scary for people in the industry," Vennes says.
Belec says that if people are ever able to serve defendants online, it will put him out of business. For the moment, though, all is well. Indeed, a miserable economy has brought nothing but good news. One of his biggest clients handles foreclosure cases, and the assignments from them have tripled this year. And if the economy doesn't turn around soon, "I suspect that collection work will hit the roof."
lonstot@seattleweekly.com
