Process Servers Get No Respect -- Everyone Hates To See This Man Coming

HE'S BEEN kerplunked by a load of dirty diapers, shot at, attacked by pet swans, threatened with a samurai sword and handcuffed countless times. He isn't a stunt man. He's a "process server," the indispensable legs of the U.S. legal system.

It's Saturday night, and Ron Belec steers his '72 blue Cadillac convertible with the SNOJOKE license plate up to a $360,000 house in a luxury-home development outside Woodinville.

Seven pins and a steel plate hold Belec's broken left ankle together, (the fallout of water-skiing too close to shore), and the papers he has to give to the owner of the house are stamped with a big red dot. Tough guy to serve, the dot means; won't open the door.

Belec, 48, throws a fluorescent "Legal Process Server" windbreaker over his Meatloaf World Tour T-shirt and hobbles over the lawn. In his hand are the documents informing the owner of the house that he's being taken to court for failing to pay a cable-television bill and a hospital bill. About $300 total.

Big deal.

All Belec has to do is find the guy and hand over the papers. Spying an open back door, Belec peeks through it. Through an open window, he talks to a boy in the house. He flashes a process-server badge he had made for the job and asks for the boy's parents. No one comes.

After 15 minutes of banging on doors, yelling through open windows and standing on the doorstep using a cellular phone to call inside, a car drives up. Belec chats, figures it's the guy he's looking for and pops the papers through the car window.

"Served," he announces and hobbles back to his car.

What happens next, Belec said, is all too familiar.

A buddy of the guy Belec just served appears brandishing a baseball bat and hollers that they're calling the police.

Fine, Belec says. He'll wait.

Minutes later, the served man himself hurtles from nowhere swinging a bat. He charges at Belec, throws him up against the car and catches his broken ankle in the door.

"My wife said you did something to our house," he yells, taking a swing. Belec pushes him back with the car door, and the bat strikes the door instead of Belec, breaking the lock. The man grabs Belec's file folder off the hood of the car and disappears into the house.

"This is how civilized society settles its disputes," Belec says an hour later, massaging his throbbing ankle and getting philosophical as he waits for the police.

Hours later, the man in the fancy house gets cited for assault and Belec drives away happy. He made $20 on that job, and, for once, it was the other guy who got arrested. He heads to a karaoke bar to celebrate.

So ends a shift in a vast, murky industry that churns to life as the rest of us head home. You won't see them in Hollywood courtrooms, but Belec and thousands of scrappy process servers like him are the indispensable legs of our legal system.

They deliver those unwelcome invitations to go to court: the divorce papers, the restraining orders, the eviction notices, the summons to be a witness.

No papers, no court action.

Just how big an industry Belec works in is anyone's guess.

But according to the National Center for State Courts, more than 90 million cases get filed in trial courts each year, most of them requiring legal papers to be served.

That doesn't even address the issue of subpoenas, said Alan H. Crowe, director of the National Association of Process Servers in Portland.

"It's mind boggling," Crowe said. "One seed in filing a lawsuit can blossom into 50 subpoenas."

Considering it costs $20 to $50 to serve one paper such as a court summons, costs easily could be in the hundreds of millions or more. (Belec's fees are negotiated on a case-by-case basis and may be hourly or by the job.)

But tracking even basic information on this free-wheeling industry is nearly impossible. Rules vary from state to state on how to serve papers. The business is regulated minimally in Washington and completely unregulated in Oregon.

Want to be a process server in Washington? Just be a state resident over 18 who is not a party in the suit, pay a $10 fee for a process-server license at the King County Courthouse, get a state business license and you're ready to serve process anywhere, anytime.

Battling negative stereotypes that put process servers barely a notch above repo men is a large part of Crowe's job.

"People get the general assumption that any idiot can go out and serve process," Crowe said. "It's a very complicated matter. It involves all kinds of skills, and it is by no stretch of the imagination just a messenger service."

ABC Legal Messengers Inc., the Seattle company Belec works for, serves about 10,000 documents a month. It says it has problems with less than a tenth of a percent of its cases.

But many of those problem cases provide raw glimpses of the fine tradition of killing the messenger. Dubbed "super serves," the problem cases often are dropped in Belec's basket.

Belec has been hit by a load of dirty diapers dropped from four floors above, he's been shot at, hit with a two-by-four, attacked by pet swans and chased down the street by a man with a samurai sword.

The lure of the business, servers say, is pitching wits against people desperate to dodge you.

"It's a game," explained Mike Starosky, a private investigator who works for NW Legal Support and Courier Services in Seattle.

One process server told of catching a man coming off a plane at an airport by waiting at the gate with the man's name on a placard.

Belec said he once took the muffler off his car and repeatedly drove past a restaurant until the police officer he was trying to serve emerged to issue him a ticket. After the officer pulled Belec over, he got his papers.

In one wildly complicated case that cost Belec's client $6,500, Belec logged 1,500 miles chasing a man around the state and faked being the guy's long-lost son to coax the man to meet him. When that failed, he traced the man to his girlfriend's house, then lured him out by pretending to be a drunk who had just run into his car.

The better-off dodge the hardest, say longtime servers.

"I've had more trouble in the suburbs than I've had in the projects," Starosky said. "They're not going to let someone take something away from them. They've clawed their way to the top."

Belec won't serve developer Martin Selig, for instance, for less than $250. If he can find Selig in Seattle, that is. Belec once had to chase him to Pebble Beach, Calif.

Styles of serving vary with the server and the case. Some are laid-back. Others, such as Belec, admittedly are more aggressive.

Starosky said in 20 years of serving papers, he's never been arrested.

Belec, on the other hand, said he's been cuffed 50 times, on charges ranging from trespassing and harassment to stalking and assault. But he said he was convicted just once, after a fight with a 60-year-old woman who kicked him in an earlier broken ankle.

Process servers complain police don't understand their business.

State law, for instance, lists serving legal process as a defense for criminal trespass. In other words, process servers are protected even after you yell at them to get off your property.

But as the Saturday-night's bat interlude illustrates, aggressive process-serving to one can feel like full-scale invasion to someone else.

The owner of the Woodinville-area house tried to sue Belec for criminal trespass, insisting Belec entered his kitchen. The King County prosecutor's office didn't file the charges.

Run-ins like this have convinced Belec that, although he's registered to carry a gun, it's a good thing not to.

"I could have easily shot that person," he reflected later, after a drink and some painkillers. "I think about that. That's why I don't carry a weapon on me very often."