Process Servers in Film

 

People often think that process serving is either a scary job or a pain of a job. You can thank Hollywood for that.

Process serving often gets a bad rap because the job gives screenwriters a free range to work with.

Why?

A process server comes in contact with different people every day, often having to travel all over town to do so. This gives screenwriters free range to create mishaps and hilarious scenarios for their character (the process server) to face.

The most recent example of this is the 2008 American film Pineapple Express.

Seth Rogan plays Dale Denton, a 25-year-old process server. Dale is first shown in the beginning of the movie delivering documents to several different people.? He wears disguises to trick those he must serve into identifying themselves so he may hand them over their legal documents.

One of his jobs is to deliver a subpoena to a drug lord and while doing so, he witnesses a murder. The movie is hilarious as Dale runs from danger while trying to figure out what is really going on, who to trust, and what to do to get himself out of the mess he unknowingly walked into.

Another movie that comes to mind is Serving Sara, a 2002 romantic comedy starring Matthew Perry and Elizabeth Hurley.

Perry plays Joe, a process server who is often ridiculed by his boss for serving his targets late. (It is later revealed that he is being sabotaged on all his process serving assignments.) One of his assignments is to serve Sara Moore (Hurley), a British socialite, divorce papers.

After a few mishaps, Joe and Sara are thrown together. Sara finds out from Joe that she will gain nothing in the divorce since her husband filled out the divorce papers according to Texas law. She decides to bribe Joe into destroying her paperwork and serving her husband divorce papers in the state of New York, where the law will grant her half of everything. Joe agrees and hilarity follows as the two set off to get Sara ?what she deserves.?

Even Lucille Ball played a process server in film – TWICE!

In Season 2, Episode 27 of The Lucy Show (1964), Lucy takes a job as a process server at an attorney?s office. Her first task is to serve a subpoena to Mr. Mooney. She goes from one mishap to another, forcing her to trail Mr. Mooney all over town. She eventually ends up stowing away on a cruise ship set for a 28 day trip!

She plays a process server again in 1968 in the show Here?s Lucy. Here, the task of delivering a summons to an unfriendly lady is not so simple but why would it be? She?s Lucy!

Don?t worry though; these farfetched adventures do not apply to the reality process servers face. Not to say they won?t face some difficult situations but JPL?s registered and bonded process servers will follow through on their assignments, are trained to know the most efficient means to fulfill their legal duties and to avoid crazy situations like the Hollywood scenarios above.

So next time you?re looking for a licensed, bonded and insured legal process server in California, give JPL Process Service a call at (866) 754-0520.

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