In his latest feeble attempts to ignore the massive motherfucking shit train bearing down on him, Lloydminster's Patrick "License Plate Driveway Cabin in the Woods Who Was That Masked Man?" Ross is now trying the delightful strategy of ignoring substitute service and apparently thinking that means it doesn't count.
Quite some time ago, given how Patrick loves to run and hide from process servers, I filed for -- and obtained -- substitute service on him that consisted of:
- emailing him at his admitted primary email address, and
- sending registered mail to his (utterly bogus) Lloydminster address
As long as I did both of those things, that was deemed proper and legal service.
Apparently, Patrick is now taking the position that, as long as no one at that address signs for and accepts that registered mail, then the service was unsuccessful. I have recently checked (informally) with a local legal colleague, who opines:
"To the best of my knowledge, once you have an order for substitute service, the Court considers service effected after the conditions have been fulfilled."
I will, of course, verify this to be certain, but it does seem to mean that Patrick averting his eyes from the arrival of registered mail is not going to help him, as the Court will consider him to have been properly served. So skulking off to his cabin in the woods is not going to save him. I'm sure a good lawyer would have told him that, but Patrick is still convinced he can go this alone.
I wonder how that's working out. Oh, right:
BONUS TRACK: A friend recently pointed out something that had not occurred to me in terms of how the family inheritance is going to be divvied up when Big Daddy Ross passes on, and the various siblings line up at the trough for the spoils.
One might think that, while I will have dibs on whatever is passed down to Patrick, none of this would affect the rest of that family of hillbillies. Not so, suggests muh colleague. He points out that, given how Patrick has almost certainly been subsidized by his father for so many years, all of that dosh being handed over to Patrick (under the table?) means less for everyone else. And the longer this drags on, the less will be the eventual haul of livestock and commemorative Ralph Klein dinnerware available to everyone.
Quite simply, it's possible that Patrick's many years of bankruptcy might be sucking the life out of everyone else's potential windfall down the road, which would explain the rumours I've heard that the rest of Patrick's family is really, really unhappy with him these days. (This is a rumour and entirely unconfirmed, but it would make a tremendous amount of sense under the circumstances as the siblings Ross watch their potential inheritance disappearing down Patrick's gaping maw.)
In any event, unless Patrick is working again (and I'm open to any information as to where), then someone has to be picking up the tab for his regular diet of $21 greaseburgers, and if that's Daddy, then the rest of the family would certainly have the right to be a wee bit miffed.
But that's all speculation.
10 comments:
The inheritance issue seems to be a good reason for one of the other kids to finally turn on Patrick, just to stop him from burning through all of Daddy's money year after year. If I was one of Patrick's siblings, I'd be really pissed off at how stupid he's been about this all these years.
Just because you complied with an order for sub service doesn't automatically mean a court will uphold service. Courts routinely rule sub service invalid where there is evidence that the document did not come to the actual attention of the recipient. See e.g. McAdam v Grimard, 2017 SKQB 39, at para 23 for analysis.
In your case, the evidence shows that the registered mail did not come to the attention of the recipient, since nobody signed for it let alone opened and read it. Unless you put a tracking gif in the email that notifies you when it's opened, I assume you'll have similar problems with that.
That doesn't mean Patrick's off the hook. He will need to show that he challenged your claim of service within a reasonable time, that he is not evading service, and that he has a reasonable defence on the merits. Chances are he won't succeed, but don't assume a court won't give him a second chance.
Anon @ 9:53 AM: There's far more to it than that, including Patrick's ignoring *multiple* sub services, refusing to provide a valid address for service, and conveniently corresponding via email when it suits him, but not when he's being served. It goes on and on, but I'm confident that Patrick is not going to have a convincing argument to get around this.
It wouldn't be a second chance, it would be more like a fifth or sixth chance.
Anon @ 9:53 AM: I would add that it will be difficult for Patrick to argue that he was unaware of attempts to serve him, given that he recently (as regular readers will know) was shrieking publicly about the horrific invasion of his privacy by my attempts to locate him in order to (as he knows well) be able to serve him.
He can't have it both ways -- complain about my allegedly uncivil attempts to locate him for the purpose of service, while simultaneously insisting he had no idea of my attempts to locate him for the purpose of service.
But I appreciate the link to that case, just to be aware of what arguments might come up.
If I'm reading this properly, it sounds like Patrick has been evading service that requires him to fill out that financial questionnaire, right? But if that's true, and he argues to the court that he was never served properly, what can the court do other than tell him to get his ass in gear and fill out that form? Even if the court believed Patrick, all that would happen is that Patrick would then be ordered to fill out and return the questionnaire. There's really no win here for Patrick, he's going to have to fill out that form no matter what.
Anon @ 11:33 AM: A keen observation. In fact, the above cited case deals with a situation in which it was vital to argue that sub service did not count as it would affect whether or not a default judgment would be overturned -- a *very* significant outcome.
In *this* case, though, if Patrick were to argue that he was not properly served (and I don't see how he has a compelling argument for that), the only outcome would be for the judge to tell him to get that form filled out and returned. But I have scads of evidence of Patrick accepting sub service over the last while, so he would have to argue as to how it worked just fine for so long and, now, *suddenly*, it stopped working. I doubt a judge would buy that.
In any event, even if he makes that argument and wins it, it doesn't change the fact that he'll have to fill out and return that questionnaire. So this isn't going to end well for him, no matter what happens.
Seems to me this is all gradually drifting towards a situation where if we assume Patrick continues to double down on obstructionism and avoidance over more and more legal interactions, it will end up being contempt of court.
PLG: There's nothing "gradual" about this.
I'm confused. How does the court communicate with Patrick to let him know about mandatory procedural dates, court appearances and so forth?
Anon @ 1:03 PM: That's more detail than I want to get into at the moment.
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