[Depicted below is another curious sub plot in all this Chisholm litigation, this one emerging from the DeForest case. Court filings related to the Facebook postings below can be viewed here.]
You wrote on July 22, 2009 at 5:06pm: Today's Chisholm update: Today was supposedly the deadline for Bobby Warner, Johnny Chisholm's business partner who Ray DeForest added as a defendant in his lawsuit (see post #73 above) to file an answer in the DeForest case. However, instead she filed a "Motion to Quash," arguing defective service of process.---
I'll have to read the process server's side of this story to be sure, but it looks to me that she may be right. Long story short, the process server tried to leave the papers for her with a friend and co-worker, at an Alabama coffee shop owned by her daughter. And a mere friend/co-worker is not legally empowered to accept service of process on her behalf at a place of business
We can infer from this Mrs. Warner is actively dodging the plaintiff's process server. Otherwise, they would have easily served her personally by now, rather than the alledgedly defective substituted service attempt described above.
Anyways, if Mrs. Warner's motion is successful, DeForest's process server will simply have to redouble his or her efforts, striving to get it done right next time. And from that point, she'll have 20 days to file an answer.
You wrote on August 4, 2009 at 5:31pm: A small yet mildly amusing update today: Ray DeForest filed a response to Bobby Warner's Motion to Quash today (see post #85, above). And I was right: Johnny Chisholm's business partner, Bobby Warner, has been actively dodging the process servers in this case.---
Attached to the motion in opposition was a statement by the process server, who detailed his prior unsuccessful attempts to locate her in person: The address in Pensacola which she listed in her Motion to Quash is, in fact, an abandoned building with a real estate lockbox on the doorknob. Calls to her known phone numbers go unreturned. When asked where she could be found, Johnny Chisholm told the process server she was living in Lillian, Alabama, where she owned a cafe with her daughter.
The ownership of this cafe is where the facts begin to come into dispute. Based on Chisholm's representation that she was an owner, the process server left the documents with an employee there (Bert Adams), who accepted service on her behalf.
But then, as we know, on the last day to file her Answer she filed a Motion to Quash instead, denying any ownership in the cafe. And that fact becomes important: The service on an employee of a business is probably good against an owner, but probably bad against a non-owner.
And the website for the "Lillian's Cafe & Coffee House" seems to back this non-ownership claim up. According to this site, Bobby Warner's sole duties at the cafe seem to consist of "bartending and cooking" for her daughter and son-in-law.
So, due to the deceptive statement by Chisholm as to her ownership of the cafe, DeForest may be temporarily out of luck on this whole service of process question. If the Motion to Quash is granted, she'll have to be re-served.
In fact...if anyone here has any knowledge as to the current whereabouts of Bobby Warner (probably somewhere around either Pensacola, FL and/or Lillian, AL, I would guess), and you wanted to further the cause of justice...you could email those tips into DeForest's attorneys' office, where I imagine they would be MUCH appreciated. Their email addys are:
Arianne B. Suarez: asuarez@ldklaw.com
Scott D. Lieberman: slieberman@ldklaw.com
You wrote on September 24, 2009 at 4:53pm: A new filing by the plaintiff's today in the DeForest case: A Motion to Extend Time For Service of Process on Defendant Warner.
In a nutshell, Bobby Warner (Johnny Chisholm's business partner) has managed to successfully play the dodge-the-process-server game for several months now. A substituted service was attempted earlier on a co-worker, but as you all may recall, that was the subject of a "Motion to Quash" a few weeks back (see posts #82 and #86 above), and thus the service's validity is in question.
So today, "in an abundance of caution" Ray DeForest filed today for a 120 day extension to serve the papers personally upon Bobby Warner...just in case her Motion to Quash is granted. For those interested in the nitty gritty, a full text of the motion is [included in the documents link here].
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