Marshals Process of Service

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Civil

7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Officials: POSNER, EASTERBROOK, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

Marshals Process of Service 

No. 14-3746 Joseph Williams v. Robert Werlinger

Public records search not sufficient to meet duty requirement imposed by Marshals Service as as required by Rule 4(3)(c).

The district court should not have accepted the responses of the Marshals Service to the order to serve Werlinger. Not that the Service can be expected to do the impossible. If Werlinger changed his name to Siddhārtha Gautama and is now a monk of a Buddhist temple in Tibet, the Marshals Service probably couldn’t find him by efforts proportionate to the importance of finding him; and then the plaintiff would be out of luck. But as should be evident from our opinion in Sellers v. United States, supra, 902 F.2d at 602, the Service had to do more than it did to try to find the ex- warden. It is most unlikely that Werlinger has emigrated turned into a witch’s familiar, or otherwise vanished. Probably he still lives in Wisconsin and probably he receives a federal pension—and, if so, the Bureau of Prisons must have a record of it and of the address to which his pension bene- fits are sent. The Bureau or the prison or both must have Werlinger’s personnel records, which would indicate his home address when he was warden. If he has since moved, the real estate agent who handled the sale of his house may know where he moved to. In all likelihood his successor as warden, or members of his staff at the prison, know his ad- dress, whether postal or email. It’s shameful that in response to the district court’s second directive the Marshals Service gave up looking for Werlinger after just two days. The Mar- shals are experts at tracking down fugitives. It should be a good deal easier to track down a retired federal prison war- den than a master criminal on the lam. It was only three months before the search began that he’d retired. The district judge must apply more pressure to the Service to find him.”

Reversed and Remanded

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.