California OKs electronic service for elusive defendants

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed the service via e-mail or electronic media bill into law (filed with the California Secretary of State on Oct. 6, 2025). Its effective date is Jan. 1, 2026. Stats.2025, ch. 403.

The basic methods of service are set forth in Cal. Civ. Proc. §§ 413.10-417.40. As the current version of Cal. Civ. Proc. § 413.30 authorizes: "Where no provision is made in this chapter or other law for the service of summons, the court in which the action is pending may direct that summons be served in a manner which is reasonably calculated to give actual notice to the party to be served and that proof of such service be made as prescribed by the court." Stats. 1969, Ch. 1610.

The 2026 version of Cal. Civ. Proc. § 413.30 augments those traditional options. Subsection (a)(1) adds that "if a plaintiff, despite exercising reasonable diligence, has been unable to effect service of the summons by any of the methods authorized under this chapter, the court in which the action is pending may, upon motion, direct that summons be served ... by electronic mail or other electronic technology...." Per subsection (a)(2): "A plaintiff seeking to establish reasonable diligence under this section shall set forth facts detailing all attempts to serve the defendant by each of the methods prescribed by statute, including facts demonstrating why each method was unsuccessful at every address or location where the defendant is likely to be found." Subsection (b) limits this new email-social media option. It "does not apply in an action against a governmental entity or an agent or employee of the governmental entity who has been sued in an official or individual capacity." See Stats.2025, ch.403 and California Senate Judiciary Committee Digest and Executive Summary (Apr. 8, 2025), https://trackbill.com/s3/bills/CA/2025/SB/85/analyses/senate-judiciary.pdf.

This sketch offers a cursory summary of academic and judicial assessments. It presumes state and federal solidarity. It concludes with a potpourri of issues submerged beneath this Brave New World iceberg. Per a New York judge's forecast: "the next frontier in the developing law of the service of process over the internet is the use of social media sites...."

Baidoo v. Blood-Dzraku, 5 N.Y.S.3d 709, 711 (2015) (service by Facebook "most" comported with due process). As one writer foresaw: "email service could be the bridge that carries service of process into the twenty-first century." Nicki Villarrubia, Comment, Living Behind Screens: The Case for Social Media as an Alternative Method of Service Upon Defendants, 70 Loyola L. Rev. 461 (2024) (hereafter Living Behind Screens).  

An early academic plea for adding electronic service options appeared in a Daily Journal essay. Slomanson, "Service of process via social media: a plea to the Legislature," Daily J. (Feb. 2, 2021), https://www.dailyjournal.com/articles/361319-service-of-process-via-social-media-a-plea-to-the-legislature. That assessment chronicled the dearth of California authority on point. Searles v. Archangel, 60 Cal.App.5th 43 (2d Dist., 2021) (first impression decision barring petitioner from service by social media on homeless respondent).

Several students and another professor have developed a cohort of facts, law and arguments suitable for practitioners, judges and legislators in all states. They have acknowledged and dissected the dilemma regarding elusive defendants. See Keely Knapp, Comment, #serviceofprocess @socialmedia: "Accepting Social Media for Service of Process in the 21st Century," 74 Louisiana L.Rev. 547 (2014) (legal system doing itself an injustice by ignoring this new technology); Angelea Upchurch, "'Hacking' Service of Process: Using Social Media to Provide Constitutionally Sufficient Notice of Process," 38 U. Ark. Little Rock L.Rev. 559 (2016) (notice must be conspicuous, verifiable and permit sufficient access to the lawsuit); Emily Davis, Comment, "Social Media: A Good Alternative for Alternative Service of Process," 52 Case W. Res. J. Int'l L. 573 (2020) (some defendants more likely to receive actual notice via this cost-effective method). The most comprehensive analysis is presented in Living Behind Screens. 

This increasingly conventional service alternative does not pose a direct state-federal conflict of laws on either of two fronts. First, Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 4(e)(1) provides that an individual may be served by "following state law for serving summons ... [of] the state where the district court is located or where service is made...." That flexibility avoids inter-system conflicts -- at least in California. Second, when the defendant is in a foreign country, an individual may be served "by other means not prohibited by [an] international agreement, as the court orders." Ultimately, there may be different results in the respective state, state-to-state and state-federal contexts. But as the following cases reveal, the evolving methodology is the same. 

California's federal courts have cleared the path on this new road to sensible service of process. In St. Francis Assisi v. Kuwait Finance House, 2016 WL 5725002 (N.D. CA, 2016), the court granted a motion to serve an ISIS financier via Twitter. He apparently lived in Kuwait. Mr. al-Ajmi had a large Twitter following. He allegedly used that platform to fundraise large sums of money for various terrorist organizations. Thus: "service by the social-media platform, Twitter, is reasonably calculated to give notice to and is the 'method of service most likely to reach' al-Ajmi [who] has an active Twitter account and continues to use it to communicate with his audience. Service by Twitter is not prohibited by international agreement with Kuwait." Id., *2.

Nine years later, the Northern District denied service by e-mail and the WhatsApp telephone application in Nicaragua v. Hills Exploration Corp., 2025 WL 360653 (N.D. CA, 2025) (hereafter Hills Exploration). There, petitioner Nicaragua sought the $1.5M pecuniary obligations imposed by an arbitral award against individuals who departed Hawaii for locations unknown, presumably in the Philippines and Guatemala. California's Northern District and the Washington federal district had previously approved service via e-mail. Federal courts in New York and Utah had previously ordered service on WhatsApp. Id., *2-*3. But "Nicaragua [on the other hand] did not contend it has made any attempt to locate a physical address ... or that any respondent is evading service." Id. Furthermore, a plaintiff "must show the use of ... the specific e-mail or WhatsApp account would be 'reasonably calculated to appraise [defendant] ... of the pendency of the action and afford it an opportunity to respond.' " Id., citing an extensive analysis in (the Nevada federal court's) Rio Properties v. Rio International Interlink, 284 F.3d 1007 (9th Cir., 2002) (first impression service on Costa Rican entity, affirming personal jurisdiction, default judgment and attorneys' fees and costs).

The Hills Exploration court thus distinguished its denial from the St. Francis approval of Twitter service in the following terms: "In particular, in St. Francis Assisi, the district court approved alternative service 'via Twitter' on a defendant located in a foreign country but did so in light of a showing that other forms of service were not possible, such as personal service, in that the defendant therein could not be located 'through skip-trace,' nor could he be served through the foreign country's 'Central Authority,' as said Central Authority 'refused to accept the summons and complaint.' " Hills Exploration, n.3, referring to the governmental middleman for transferring service papers within each nation's sovereign jurisdiction. 

In conclusion, a newspaper perspective cannot be a loquacious law review discourse. It is instead designed to acquaint the reader with a significant change in California civil procedure coming your way on Jan. 1, 2026. It thus furnishes some insight into a bombshell that will soon burst onto the legal battlefield. This commentary foreshadows the following yet to be resolved issues involving personal jurisdiction: due diligence with exhausting the traditional service options; whether a defendant's alleged online name is in fact that of the intended target; statute of limitations and delay of prosecution regimes involving evasive defendants; likelihood of receipt; preponderance of evidence skirmishes involving email versus social media service; evolving judicial preferences among the various electronic means of service; and resolution of the coming spotlight on default judgments.