Alabama Injury Lawsuit - Part Three - Lawsuit Is Served On Defendant
We previously discussed filing the personal injury suit and now we come to serving the defendant with the lawsuit. Once the lawsuit is filed, the defendant needs to be served in order for the time to start running for the defendant to answer the suit.
The constitution requires that defendants be given due process of law and this means (in our context) that the defendant must be served with the lawsuit. It would be fundamentally unfair for the defendant to NOT be served and a judgment be entered against the defendant for failing to answer the complaint.
What are the primary ways a defendant is served with a lawsuit? First, certified mail is sent to the defendant or someone who is authorized to accept service on behalf of the defendant. For example, in a trucking case the trucking company normally has an "agent for service" which is an individual or company that we can send the lawsuit to and this will cause the defendant to be served. Usually, this is a company in Montgomery whose primary purpose is to receive lawsuits and notify their customer the defendant.
A second way of being served is by personally having the Sheriff’s office or other appropriate person hand deliver the lawsuit to the defendant.
A final way is the rare procedure of service by publication which is where a defendant that is avoiding service can be deemed served by a written publication in the Alabama Messenger or other newspapers that the law presumes the defendant will read. The basic gist behind this is that if someone is avoiding service then giving notice to the world through the appropriate newspaper is sufficient and complies with due process.
There are many other details of service that we could cover but we hope this gives you a general idea of how the process works. Once a defendant is served, they will normally have 30 days to answer the complaint or to file a motion to dismiss. We will address this next.
