The best reason to not pursue a strategy of avoiding being served with legal documents is that it can cause you to forfeit your legal rights, creating consequences potentially much worse than the lawsuits themselves. While the defendant thinks they’ve cheated the system by avoiding being served chuckles in their friend’s basement, a judgment could be filed against them. This could happen because while they were in hiding, they were not aware they were served by substituted service or “nail and mail.”
When the time period expires on their right to defend the action, the judge could issue a default judgment against them. They will now be responsible for all the costs of the attempted at services, attempts to locate them, plus the attorney’s fees and other costs of attempting to overturn the default judgment. In some cases, they may end up liable for the default judgment, the cost of investigation, and attorney fees. Instead of avoiding service, they would have been much better off applying their resources to trying to get the case against them dismissed or defending against the causes of action contained in the legal action against them.
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