BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 2256
Page 1
ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB 2256 (Garcia)
As Amended March 28, 2014
Majority vote
JUDICIARY 7-1
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|Ayes:|Wieckowski, Alejo, Chau, | | |
| |Dickinson, Garcia, | | |
| |Muratsuchi, Stone | | |
| | | | |
|-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------|
|Nays:|Maienschein | | |
| | | | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY : Revises and increases statutorily prescribed fees for
serving, executing, and processing required court notices,
writs, orders, and other services provided by sheriffs, and
makes various other changes relating to service of civil
process. Specifically, this bill :
1)Increases the fees for many services provided by sheriff's
departments, such as serving, executing, and processing court
notices, writs, and orders. Among other things, the fee for
service of a summons and complaint is increased from $35 to
$40, and the fee for serving or executing any process or
notice required by law is also increased from $35 to $40.
2)Increases, from $15 to $18, the set-aside amount of any fee
collected by the sheriff's civil division or marshal under
Government Code Sections 26721, 26722, 26725, 26726, 26728,
26730, 26733.5, 26734, 26736, 26738, 26742, 26743, 26744, and
26750 that is required to be deposited in a special fund in
the county treasury.
3)Repeals the U.S. citizenship requirement that applies to any
person who seeks to service legal process in an action against
a sheriff.
4)Requires access to a gated community by a sheriff, registered
process server, or licensed private investigator, whether or
not a guard is present, for the purpose of performing lawful
service of process or service of a subpoena, and repeals the
AB 2256
Page 2
requirement for disclosure of the identity of the person to be
served to a guard at the gated community.
5)Provides that a sheriff or marshal may not serve a summons and
complaint upon a business organization whose legal business
form is unknown.
6)Clarifies that, even if service of garnishment on a bank is
ineffective under Code of Civil Procedure (CCP) Section
684.115, the bank is nevertheless required to respond to the
legal process by mailing or delivery of the garnishee's
memorandum to the levying officer within the time otherwise
provided, with a statement on the memorandum stating that the
legal process was not properly served at the bank's designated
location for receiving legal process, and providing the
address at which the bank is to receive legal process.
7)Repeals the sheriff's fee to serve a contempt warrant upon a
person who fails to appear for an asset examination, and makes
a technical correction to current law requiring the court to
set bail in the amount of the warrant when a warrant for
contempt is issued pursuant to Civil Code Section 1993(b).
8)Clarifies that a warrant issued by the court to compel a
person to appear for an asset examination shall be directed to
any peace officer, not only a sheriff.
9)Allows the sheriff to publish notice of service of a
protective order on the sheriff's public Web site, in lieu of
or in addition to providing such notice by email or telephone
to the person protected by the order.
FISCAL EFFECT : None
COMMENTS : This bill, sponsored by the California State
Sheriff's Association and the Los Angeles County Sheriff,
primarily seeks to increase fees for service of legal process
and other types of services provided by sheriffs. In most
cases, the fee increases sought by this bill are modest and in
the range of $5 to $10 per service provided. In addition, the
bill contains a number of otherwise unrelated provisions that
seek to increase operational efficiencies for sheriffs in
carrying out their day-to-day duties related to service of civil
process, and conserve scarce resources.
AB 2256
Page 3
According to the author, the primary purpose of the bill is to
make modest increases to the fees charged by sheriffs'
departments to address significant budget shortfalls that have
impaired the sheriffs' civil process operations. Proponents
state that the fees currently assessed cover only a portion of
the costs sheriffs incur in performing service of process, and
often force sheriffs' budgets to bear the majority of the
burden. They contend that these proposed fee increases are
needed to increase revenue, help offset increasing costs, and
make service of process functions more self-supporting to
protect local governments from having to cover budgetary
shortfalls.
This bill seeks increases to most types of civil process-related
service offered by sheriffs under the Government Code
(commencing with Section 26720) specifying fees to be charged by
sheriffs. In addition, this bill seeks to increase, from $15 to
$18, the amount of any applicable fee collected by the sheriff's
civil division that is required to be deposited in a special
fund in the county treasury. The proposed new $18 set-aside
amount applies to 14 types of common fees specified in the
Government Code. According to the author, this is not a fee
increase, but rather a subsidy provision that allows the sheriff
to retain a greater share of fee revenue for its civil
operations and minimize the amount that taxpayers might have to
ultimately subsidize when the sheriff's costs exceed its
revenue.
An increasing number of Californians now live in gated
communities that frequently are staffed by a guard at the main
entrance. Existing law requires a sheriff or other person
seeking to perform service of process upon a resident of a gated
community staffed by a guard to display his or her
identification to the guard and disclose the identity of the
person to be served. According to the author, conditional
access to a gated community conflicts with the authority of the
sheriff to access such areas to perform his or her legal duties,
including lawful service of process. Moreover, the author
contends that this requirement serves little useful purpose
other than to alert a resident of a gated community that a
sheriff is present at the guard's station to serve legal process
and allow the resident an opportunity to avoid being served.
Accordingly, this bill would guarantee the sheriff (or other
AB 2256
Page 4
qualified person) access to a gated community whether or not a
guard is present, for the purpose of performing lawful service
of process or service of a subpoena, and the bill would repeal
the requirement that the identity of the person to be served be
disclosed to the guard at the gated community, if there is one.
CCP Section 415.95 permits service of a summons and complaint
upon a business organization whose legal business form is
unknown, but according to the author, does not provide clear
direction to sheriffs who have to serve summons and complaints
on such businesses. The sheriffs contend that it is essential
for them to know the legal business form of the debtor when
attempting to enforce a writ because businesses may change their
legal form and complicate matters for the creditor. This bill
would clarify that sheriffs cannot be compelled to serve process
on a business organization whose form is unknown, and would
essentially codify the sheriffs' current practice to instead
observe the rule of CCP Section 687.010(a)(4), which requires
the writ of execution to state the type of legal entity of the
judgment debtor when the debtor is not a natural person.
Existing law permits but does not require the sheriff to notify
a person protected by a protective order that the order was
served by contacting the protected person by phone or email.
This bill would revise these provisions to allow the sheriff to
post this information to the sheriff's Web site in lieu of, or
in addition to, email or telephone notification. Importantly,
existing law already requires notification to the protected
person by U.S. mail to confirm the order was served, and this
bill does not disturb that requirement. Instead, it merely
revises the additional options for confirmation of service to
allow the information to be posted to a Web site, rather than an
email message or phone call. According to the author, this will
help conserve sheriffs' resources because Web site posting is
more efficient than telephone calling, particularly for large
batches of protective orders.
Among other things, this bill clarifies that, even if service of
garnishment on a bank is ineffective under CCP Section 684.115,
the bank is nevertheless required to respond to the legal
process by mailing or delivery of the garnishee's memorandum to
the levying officer, as prescribed. By making such response
mandatory rather than permissive, this provision eliminates an
ambiguity that, according to sheriffs, was creating unintended
AB 2256
Page 5
negative consequences for sheriffs, and moreover put Section
684.115 in conflict with general civil law requirements that,
with only one exception, do not allow a person to be served to
refuse service at his or her discretion.
In addition, this bill makes technical changes to clarify that a
warrant issued by the court to compel a person to appear for an
asset examination shall be directed to any peace officer, not
only a sheriff. Finally, this bill repeals an outdated and
peculiar provision of law, dating to 1951, that requires any
person serving process in an action against a sheriff to be an
American citizen.
Analysis Prepared by : Anthony Lew / JUD. / (916) 319-2334
FN: 0003098