Opinion ID: 1057606
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Service of Process by Mail Upon Defendants Within the State of Tennessee

Text: Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 4.04(10) provides that service of process may also be effectuated by mail: Service by mail of a summons and complaint upon a defendant may be made by the plaintiff, the plaintiff's attorney or by any person authorized by statute. After the complaint is filed, the clerk shall, upon request, furnish the original summons, a certified copy thereof and a copy of the filed complaint to the plaintiff, the plaintiff's attorney or other authorized person for service by mail. Such person shall send, postage prepaid, a certified copy of the summons and a copy of the complaint by registered return receipt or certified return receipt mail to the defendant. If the defendant to be served is an individual or entity covered by [a subparagraph of Rule 4], the return receipt mail shall be addressed to an individual specified in the applicable subparagraph. The original summons shall be used for return of service of process pursuant to Rule 4.03(2). Second, additional requirements for service by mail are discussed in Rule 4.03(2): When process is served by mail, the original summons, endorsed as below; an affidavit of the person making service setting forth the person's compliance with the requirements of this rule; and, the return receipt shall be sent to and filed by the clerk. The person making service shall endorse over his or her signature on the original summons the date of mailing a certified copy of the summons and a copy of the complaint to the defendant and the date of receipt of the return receipt from the defendant. If the return receipt is signed by the defendant, or by a person designated by Rule 4.04 or by statute, service on the defendant shall be complete. If not, service by mail may be attempted again or other methods authorized by these rules or by statute may be used. (Emphasis added). The language of Rule 4.03 set[s] forth a mandatory requirement rather than a discretionary ideal that need not be strictly enforced to confer jurisdiction over a party. Estate of McFerren v. Infinity Transp., LLC, 197 S.W.3d 743, 748 (Tenn.Workers Comp.Panel 2006). Based on Rule 4.03's explicit restriction of whom may sign the return receipt, [o]rdinarily, ... when the person to be served is an individual, the rule seems to require that the return receipt be signed by the defendant and no one else. Banks & Entman, § 2-3(v), at 2-37. Thus, in Edwards v. Campbell, No. E2000-01463-COA-R3-CV, 2001 WL 52776 (Tenn.Ct. App. Jan.23, 2001), the plaintiffs attempted to serve process by mail. The signatory of the return mail receipts was, according to plaintiff's unsubstantiated allegations, the wife and mother of the defendants. However, nothing in the record indicated that the signatory was a person[] designated by Rule 4.04 or by statute, such as an agent authorized by defendants to accept service of process. Therefore, the Court of Appeals held that the plaintiffs did not perfect service of process when they obtained the alleged wife and mother's signature on the return receipts. Id. at . A similar analysis of Tennessee law appears in Massey v. Hess, No. 1:05-cv-249, 2006 WL 2370205 (E.D.Tenn. Aug.14, 2006). There, the plaintiffs attempted to serve two police officers by certified mail at the station where the officers worked. Another employee at the station received and signed for the process documents. The federal court rejected plaintiffs' contention that the officers were properly served under the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure. [10] Id. at . The employee who received the documents was simply a person who work[ed] in the same office as the defendant officers. Id. at . The employee was not an agent authorized by appointment or law to receive service on behalf of the officers, within the language of Rule 4.04(1). Id. Therefore, the return receipt was not signed by the defendant, or by a person designated by Rule 4.04 or by statute, and service was not complete within the meaning of Rule 4.03(2). Id. at . In this case, because Plaintiff did not effectively serve the original complaint, the viability of Plaintiff's lawsuit against Dr. Haynes hinges on whether Plaintiff effectively served the amended complaint on Dr. Haynes by certified mail. The record establishes Plaintiff's initial compliance with Rule 4.04(10) in her effort to serve the timely-filed amended complaint on Dr. Haynes by mail. Plaintiff's attorney addressed to Dr. Haynes a copy of the summons and the amended complaint by certified mail, return receipt requested. According to the plain language of Rule 4.03(2), however, service was not complete unless the signatory of the return receipt was a person designated by Rule 4.04. [11] In this case, Funderburk signed the return receipt, rather than Dr. Haynes. As we have discussed supra, Rule 4.04(1) states that an agent authorized by appointment ... to receive service on behalf of an individual defendant may receive said service. The dispositive question, therefore, is whether Funderburk was an agent authorized by appointment to receive service on Dr. Haynes's behalf. Dr. Haynes's affidavit and Funderburk's deposition testimony agree that Funderburk was not authorized to receive service of process on behalf of Dr. Haynes. Furthermore, Funderburk did not check the Agent box on the return receipt when she signed for the summons and amended complaint addressed to Dr. Haynes. Nonetheless, Plaintiff contends that Funderburk was authorized to receive service of process because she was authorized to receive and sign for certified mail addressed to MedSouth's employees, including physicians such as Dr. Haynes who worked at the Dyersburg clinic. Funderburk testified that she was one of at least four employees in administration who regularly signed for certified mail. She testified that, when the Post Office delivered certified mail, the mail carrier would ask the first person who could be found in administration to sign for it. After signing for the mail, Funderburk would take it to the recipient physician's mailbox, where the physician or the physician's nurse would pick it up. Funderburk testified that her supervisor, Sheila Curtis, was aware that employees in administration were signing for certified mail. Alred corroborated Funderburk's description of the certified mail procedures, testifying himself that an administrative office employee, such as Funderburk, would generally sign the return receipt. Therefore, there is evidence in the record that Funderburk was authorized to sign for certified mail addressed to MedSouth employees and delivered to the Dyersburg clinic. Such authority does not ipso facto establish that Funderburk was an agent authorized by appointment to receive service of process for Dr. Haynes, however. The Court of Appeals previously confronted this issue in Boles, the case on which the trial court relied in denying Defendants' motion for summary judgment. [12] See 2000 WL 1030837. In Boles, the plaintiffs sued their home insurer and its claims investigator for failing to pay their claim for fire loss. Plaintiffs attempted service by certified mail, and a secretary in the insurer's Manchester claims office signed return receipts for both the insurance company and the claims investigator. The trial court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss for insufficiency of service of process. Recognizing the issue as one of first impression, the Court of Appeals held that the secretary was authorized to receive service of process on behalf of both defendants and reversed the judgment of dismissal. Id. at -6. The Court of Appeals began by citing persuasive authorities from other jurisdictions concluding that an employee authorized to sign for and receive a defendant's certified mail was likewise an authorized agent to accept service of process on that defendant's behalf. Id. The intermediate court then discussed the testimony of the secretary and the district claims manager that the secretary was authorized to sign for and receive certified mail on behalf of the insurer and its employees in the Manchester office. [13] Id. The court emphasized that the secretary had received specific authorization to sign for and receive certified mail; signed for both pieces of certified mail in this case; and then delivered those documents to the recipients, who forwarded the documents to legal counsel. Id. In the case presently before us, the Court of Appeals declined to follow Boles 's conclusion that an agent was authorized to accept service of process solely on the basis of having authority to sign for certified mail. The intermediate court rejected the proposition that the ability to sign for certified mail, in and of itself, equates to authority to receive service of process. Hall ex rel. Hall, 2009 WL 782761, at . Instead, the court concluded that while Rule 4.04(10) is intended to provide plaintiffs with an alternate means of effectuating service, ... [it] is not intended to expand the class of persons who are authorized to accept service of process under Rule 4.04(1) and 4.04(4). Id. (emphasis added). While the [a]uthority to sign for certified mail may be a factor in whether Funderburk had the authority to accept service of process, that fact in and of itself is not sufficient to support a finding of implied authority. Id. at -14. As for Boles 's citations to persuasive authorities from other jurisdictions that found the authority to accept service of process based on the authority to sign for and receive certified mail, the Court of Appeals concluded that its prior reliance on those cases was misplaced. Id. at . Instead, those cases raised different questions about the adequacy of service and/or involved procedural rules that were meaningfully different from Tennessee's rules. Id. at -12. We agree. The Court of Appeals ultimately concluded that Funderburk was not authorized by appointment to receive service on behalf of Dr. Haynes. The court emphasized the testimony from both Dr. Haynes and Funderburk that she did not have express authority to accept service of process on his behalf. Likewise, there was no implied authority because the record did not indicate that accepting service on Dr. Haynes's behalf was incidental and necessary to Funderburk's duties as an accounts payable clerk. Decisions from other jurisdictions illustrate the importance of the procedural rule language in determining whether the authority to sign for certified mail is sufficient to convey authority to receive service of process. In Cook, a receptionist at a medical office accepted service for one of the physicians who shared that office space. 967 S.W.2d at 689. That state's rule of procedure, equivalent to our Rule 4.04(1), allowed personal service of an individual defendant by delivering process to an agent authorized by appointment or required by law to receive service of process. Mo. R. Civ. P. 54.13(b)(1). The receptionist's job activities for the defendant included, among other tasks, accepting the defendant's certified mail. The defendant and his assistant had not expressly authorized the receptionist to accept service of process for the defendant, and the receptionist testified that she had not been given instructions to receive service on the defendant's behalf. The Missouri Court of Appeals held that the receptionist was not an agent authorized by appointment to accept service on the defendant's behalf. Id. at 693. The receptionist performed only very limited tasks for the defendant, including receipt of the defendant's certified mail, and those activities did not encompass the power to receive service of process on behalf of [d]efendant. Id. at 692. Nor was the power to accept service of process incidental and necessary to accomplish the job activities that the receptionist performed for the defendant. Id. The significance of rule language specifically directing service on an agent authorized to receive service of process is further demonstrated by a different outcome in a case applying a rule that lacked such specific language. See Barlage v. Valentine, 210 Ariz. 270, 110 P.3d 371 (Ariz.Ct.App. 2005). In that case, the applicable rule directed that service by mail of an out-of-state defendant be sent to the person to be served by any form of mail requiring a signed and returned receipt. Ariz. R. Civ. P. 4.2(c). The plaintiff mailed the summons and complaint to the address on the defendant's driver's license, which turned out to be the location of a commercial mail-receiving agency (CMRA). The defendant had expressly authorized in writing that the CMRA could accept certified mail (including restricted delivery mail) on her behalf, and one of the CMRA's employees had signed the return receipt for the summons and complaint. Accordingly, the court held that the CMRA was the defendant's agent for the purpose of receiving mail. The defendant contended that service was not effective because the defendant had not specifically made the CMRA her agent for service of process. The court rejected that argument because the language of the rule does not require delivery to someone expressly authorized to receive service, but rather, to the person to be served.... Because [the defendant] unconditionally authorized her CMRA to accept certified mail on her behalf, the CMRA's acceptance of the summons and complaint delivered in that manner sufficiently evidenced [the defendant's] receipt of service. Id. at 377. The authority to receive certified mail was sufficient in that case to vest the CMRA with the authority to accept service of process, but only in the absence of a provision requiring delivery to an agent authorized to accept service of process. Based on the language of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure and the interpretation of analogous provisions by courts in other jurisdictions, we hold that a person with the authority to sign for and receive certified mail does not, without more, qualify as an agent authorized by appointment to receive service of process on behalf of an individual defendant. And, based on the undisputed facts in the record, we agree with the Court of Appeals that Funderburk was not an agent authorized by appointment to accept service of process on behalf of Dr. Haynes. Therefore, Plaintiff did not effectuate service of process on Dr. Haynes when Funderburk signed the return receipt for the summons and amended complaint. Accordingly, both of Plaintiff's attempts to serve Dr. Haynes in this action failed to comply with the relevant provisions of Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 4. This holding in no way precludes a plaintiff who wishes to serve a defendant by mail from doing so. When sending the summons and complaint via certified or registered mail, the plaintiff may avoid the predicament in this case by restricting delivery to a specific person. See Stonewall Ins. Co. v. Horak, 325 N.W.2d 134, 136 (Minn.1982) (prudence would seem to dictate that restricted certified mail, which includes an endorsement on the envelope to `deliver to addressee only,' be used). Also, the plaintiff is not limited to one bite at the apple. If delivery by certified mail fails in the first instance, Rule 4.03(2) expressly states that service by mail may be attempted again or other methods authorized by these rules or by statute may be used.
Because Plaintiff did not effectively serve the original complaint, the viability of Plaintiff's lawsuit against MedSouth hinges on whether Plaintiff effectively served the amended complaint on MedSouth by certified mail. With regard to the attempted service of that amended complaint, the record establishes Plaintiff's initial compliance with Rule 4.04(10). Plaintiff's attorney addressed to Dr. Melton, the registered agent, a copy of the summons and the amended complaint by certified mail, return receipt requested. According to the plain language of Rule 4.03(2), however, service was not complete unless the signatory of the return receipt was a person designated by Rule 4.04. [14] In this case, Funderburk signed the return receipt, rather than Dr. Melton. As we have discussed supra, Rule 4.04(4) designates an officer or managing agent... [,] the chief agent in the county wherein the action is brought, or ... any other agent authorized by appointment or by law to receive service on behalf of the corporation as appropriate individuals to receive process for a corporate defendant. The dispositive question, therefore, is whether Funderburk fell within any of the categories designated by Rule 4.04(4) or, per Rubio, was authorized by Dr. Melton as his subagent for performing his duties as registered agent. We begin with the question of whether Funderburk was MedSouth's authorized agent to receive service. On this point the deposition testimony of Funderburk, Dr. Melton, and Alred uniformly maintains that Funderburk was not authorized to receive service of process on MedSouth's behalf. Furthermore, Funderburk did not check the Agent box on the return receipt when she signed for the summons and amended complaint addressed to Dr. Melton. Nonetheless, Plaintiff contends that Funderburk had authority to receive service of process for MedSouth because she was authorized to receive and sign for certified mail addressed to MedSouth. In our analysis of the attempted service by certified mail on Dr. Haynes, we discussed the evidence supporting the conclusion that Funderburk was authorized to sign for some certified mail delivered to the MedSouth clinic. That discussion is equally applicable here. Nothing in the record suggests that Funderburk and her colleagues in the administrative office treated certified mail addressed to MedSouth differently from certified mail addressed to individual physicians who worked at the clinic. As she did with Dr. Haynes's mail, Funderburk testified that she placed MedSouth's mail in Dr. Melton's box because the envelope had Dr. Melton's name on it. We must now decide whether the authority to sign for certified mail makes Funderburk an agent authorized by appointment to receive service of process for MedSouth. As with the attempted service on Dr. Haynes, Plaintiff relies on the Court of Appeals' decision in Boles, 2000 WL 1030837. As set forth above, the Court of Appeals in this case declined to follow Boles to the extent it held that an agent was authorized to accept service of process solely on the basis of having authority to sign for certified mail. Instead, the Court of Appeals concluded that Funderburk was not authorized by appointment to receive service on behalf of MedSouth. The intermediate court found nothing in the record to indicate that MedSouth had granted Funderburk the express or implied authority to accept service on its behalf. The court further reasoned that Funderburk's job did not place her in a position that would make it fair, reasonable, and just to imply the authority to accept service on MedSouth's behalf. Rather than fulfilling managerial duties or otherwise holding a position of authority, Funderburk was a payroll clerk who happened to be one of several people in the administrative office whom the mail carrier might ask to sign for certified mail. The conclusion of courts in other jurisdictions interpreting comparably worded provisions supports the Court of Appeals' construction. In one case, a court was interpreting a state rule directing service by delivery of the summons and complaint to `a person authorized by the corporation to receive service of process.' Dill v. Berquist Constr. Co., 24 Cal.App.4th 1426, 29 Cal.Rptr.2d 746, 749 n. 3 (1994) (quoting Cal.Civ.Proc.Code § 416.10(b)). [15] The only evidence of agency in Dill was the purported agent's signature in the SignatureAgent line of the return receipt. Id. at 752. The court rejected the argument that the authority to sign for mail meant the signatory was also authorized to accept service of process within the meaning of the service statute. The court reasoned as follows: Agents are not fungible. A person who is authorized to perform one function on behalf of a principal may have no authority at all regarding a different function. In particular, the fact that a person is authorized to receive mail on behalf of a corporation and to sign receipts acknowledging the delivery of that mail does not mean that the same person is authorized by the corporation to accept service of process. Id. In another jurisdiction where the rule similarly permitted service on a corporation by delivering the summons to an agent authorized expressly or impliedly... to receive service of summons, the trial court found effective service based on the purported agent's authority to sign for receipt of mail. See Sakovich v. O'Neill, No. C2-88-1073, 1989 WL 10407, at  (Minn.Ct.App., February 14, 1989) (discussing Minn. R. Civ. P. 4.03(c)). In that case, the certified mail receipts for the defendant medical clinic were signed by an individual who worked at the clinic's registration desk. The court of appeals reversed the trial court and dismissed the action for lack of personal jurisdiction. Id. at . The court reasoned that the absence of express authority was undisputed and there was no evidence in the record to establish a valid implied agency relationship between the [defendant] and the [signatory] for purposes of accepting service of process.  Id. at  (emphasis added). Again, where the rule specifically required that the agent be authorized to receive service of process, evidence of the authority to sign for certified mail was insufficient to make service effective. Based on the language of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure and the interpretation of analogous provisions by courts in other jurisdictions, we hold that a corporate agent with the authority to sign for and receive the corporation's certified mail does not, without more, qualify as an agent authorized by appointment to receive service of process on behalf of a corporate defendant. And, based on the undisputed facts in the record, we agree with the Court of Appeals that Funderburk was not an agent authorized by appointment to accept service of process on behalf of MedSouth. Likewise, the record here provides no support for the kind of subagency relationship that the Court of Appeals found in Rubio. Neither Dr. Melton nor Funderburk offered any testimony that would suggest Dr. Melton appointed Funderburk as his subagent to perform any of his duties as registered agent. Accordingly, both of Plaintiff's attempts to serve MedSouth in this action failed to comply with the relevant provisions of Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 4. As we explained supra in reaching the same conclusion with respect to individual defendants, our holding does not preclude a plaintiff from serving process on a corporation by mail. A plaintiff may restrict delivery to any of the individuals designated in Rule 4.04(4). Furthermore, in the event that service by mail is unsuccessful, Rule 4.03(2) expressly allows the plaintiff to try service by mail again or use another method of process service authorized by our Rules. Moreover, we agree with the Court of Appeals that Rule 4.04(10) gives plaintiff an alternative means to effect service but does not permit plaintiff to serve persons other than those expressly listed in 4.04(4). To hold otherwise, as the Court of Appeals did in Boles, would run counter to Rule 4.03(2), which requires a return receipt signed by the defendant, or by a person designated by Rule 4.04 or by statute to complete service by certified mail.