Served & Found
Suing someone in a locked Tempe apartment building? Start here
A lot of newer Tempe housing is built around a locked front door. The towers by Tempe Town Lake, the mid-rise blocks near downtown and the light rail, the student buildings close to ASU: residents get a fob, and everyone else gets a call box. If the person you are suing lives in one of them, it is natural to wonder whether the papers can ever reach them.
They can. A locked lobby makes service slower and sometimes pricier, but it does not make anyone unservable. Here is what it changes for you, and what you can do about it.
You need someone else to deliver the papers
Arizona does not let you serve your own case. The Maricopa County Superior Court's service FAQ lists the people who may: a sheriff or deputy, a constable or deputy, or a certified private process server. Whoever does it cannot be involved in the case. Most people in Tempe hire a private process server.
Private servers are certified through the Arizona Supreme Court, and you can look up anyone you are about to hire in the court's process server directory. Every process server listed on Served & Found is on that certified list.
What a fob door does to your bill
A locked lobby keeps out strangers. It does not keep the resident in. Your former roommate or tenant still goes to work, walks to class, picks up packages and takes the car out of the garage. A server can hand over the papers wherever they lawfully find the person, and that includes the sidewalk outside the building.
What the door changes is the number of trips. If the person will not buzz a stranger up, it can take several attempts at different times of day. Before you hire, ask four things:
- how many attempts the price includes
- what times of day those attempts happen
- what each extra attempt costs
- whether you can agree a cap in writing
One more question is worth asking out loud: how do they get into controlled buildings? The answer you want is "through the access the building gives visitors, or I wait for the person outside." A server should never follow a resident through the door, pretend to be a delivery driver or lean on a concierge. Besides being wrong, it gives the other side a reason to attack the service later. If anyone offers to do it, call someone else.
The front desk cannot take the papers for them
People ask this constantly. Can the concierge or the leasing office just take the envelope? Almost always, no.
Arizona allows papers to be left at a person's home with someone of suitable age and discretion who lives there. Leasing staff and concierges work in the building, but they do not live in the unit. Papers left at the desk, in the package room or in a mailbox are a message, not service, and relying on them can cost you months if the case is later challenged.
An adult roommate is a different matter. If someone who actually lives in the unit comes down and accepts the papers, that can be valid. Ask your server to write down the person's name and that they confirmed they live there.
What to send your server before the first attempt
The less your server has to guess, the fewer attempts you pay for. Send what you already know:
- the building and unit number, not just the complex's street address
- the name the person is likely to use on the call box directory
- a recent photo
- the car they drive, if you know it
- rough work or class hours
You do not have to investigate anyone. If a detail is a guess, say so.
If they simply never come down
Some people ignore the call box for weeks. If that happens, the court has a way forward. You can file a motion asking a judge for permission to serve another way, called alternative service. According to the Superior Court's FAQ, if the judge agrees, the papers can be left with someone other than a party to the case, and you must also mail the summons, the complaint and the court's order to the person's last known business or home address.
Judges decide these motions on the record of what was tried, so ask your server for real attempt notes: dates, times, and what happened at the call box each time. "No answer" on its own does not say much. Whether to file the motion is a call to make with your lawyer. This guide is general information, not legal advice.
Keep an eye on the deadline while this plays out. In a Superior Court civil case, the summons and complaint generally have to be served within 90 days after you file. A justice court case runs on its own rules, so check the papers or ask the clerk.
If you are the one behind the fob
If you think someone is trying to serve you, staying upstairs rarely helps. The case continues either way, and a judge can approve another method of service. Taking the papers is not admitting anything. It starts your time to respond: generally 20 days if you were served in Arizona and 30 if you were served out of state, according to the Superior Court's timetable. Our guide on what to do if you have been served walks through the first steps.
Finding a server for a Tempe building
When you call around, ask how often the server works controlled-access buildings near campus and the lake, and ask to see a sample of their attempt notes. The Tempe process servers we list are on the Arizona Supreme Court's certified list, and so are the wider East Valley process servers. Our guide on how to hire a process server has more questions worth asking. If the person has moved out since you last heard from them, read our piece on serving someone who left Tempe after the semester, and the Tempe page has everyone else in town.
Before you call anyone, check whether you have a current photo of the person. In a tower with three hundred residents and one lobby, it is the detail servers ask for first.
See the board: everyone in Tempe · process servers only.