When a friend I’ll call Michelle moved to LA last September her landlord stiffed her for the $1,875 security deposit. She and her husband sent him an e-mail and left messages on his answering machine, but he didn’t respond. When they asked their old next-door neighbor to talk to him he said he’d sent the check.
“You’re not one of these people on the form?” she said.
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She said the form had to be signed by Michelle and her husband and notarized. I said Michelle had talked to someone in the clerk’s office who told her I could fill out the form for her.
“They have to sign the form and get it notarized,” she said. “I just hand out forms. I’m not supposed to hand out advice. I could lose my job.”
A couple weeks later I went back with the complaint, the copies, and the signed and notarized summons form. Following Michelle’s instructions, I got in line in room 602, and 20 minutes later piled my papers in front of a sad-looking man. He sorted through them, showed me where to write the date the landlord had to respond by, and told me the fee was $144.34.
Michelle’s landlord had 30 days to respond to the summons, but he managed to keep ducking the mail carrier and never got it. In May I was back in line in room 602 with the new signed and notarized form Michelle had sent me, asking the sheriff to serve the summons. She’d even had her sister, a lawyer, call the clerk’s office to make sure it was the right one.
There was no line at the sheriff’s office, just three women sitting behind the counter, writing. None of them looked up. I walked up to a young woman, who kept filling out a form–an employee information sheet. I stood there a minute, another half minute, then said as politely as I could, “Am I in the right place?”
