California Court of Appeal

In this case, plaintiff filed a civil complaint against defendant seeking recovery of unpaid legal fees incurred in a bankruptcy proceeding, and after several unsuccessful attempts at personal service and service by publication, obtained a default judgment. The trial court’s denial of defendant's motion to set aside default and default judgment is reversed, where: 1) plaintiff failed to comply with Code of Civil Procedure section 587, which requires that the application for entry of default and default judgment be mailed to the defendant's last known address, and plaintiff instead declared that that defendant's address was "unknown" to it because it had been unable to personally serve Raissi at any of the addresses it discovered; and 2) a mailing address is not "unknown" to a plaintiff merely because personal service could not be effected at that address.

Appellate Information

• Decided 01/20/2015
• Published 01/20/2015

Judges

• Premo

Court

• California Court of Appeal

Counsel