The Process Server

A few weeks ago, my doorbell rang. On the way down the stairs to answer it, I saw a woman through the high window in the top of the door.

I opened it and saw she was around thirty, with long ashen hair. She asked if I was “Wayne Barnes,” and I said I was. She said she had a subpoena for me and extended it to me.

With no reluctance, I took the pages and began to look at them. She started to leave, but I stopped her. I wanted to make sure the subpoena was for me, that I was the right Wayne Barnes, but also to clarify what the subpoena was for.

She was congenial and stood nearby until I reviewed the few pages. I was to be at a lawyer’s office in Lakeland, FL, on Monday, October 24th, about two weeks away, at 1 PM.

Fine, I thought, but I was already calculating that it would be either a cumbersome flight, from Fort Lauderdale, to Tampa, then renting a car to drive back to Lakeland for nearly an hour—or I could drive three-and-a-half hours, from my home in Plantation, over 200 miles.

I looked further and saw the matter pertained to a case I had been working on from before the Covid pandemic, and now the whole thing might finally come to a conclusion. If I had anything to say about it, a positive conclusion for my client would be the result of the deposition.

I asked the process server if she knew anything about the matter, and she said, no, she didn’t, as she only serves the papers.

I paused for a moment and asked if she might want to know what the subpoena was for, other than my need to travel to Lakeland.

This definitely caught her attention, and I was pretty certain none of her many dozens, if not hundreds, of process-serving moments had taken this turn.

While she stood there, fairly surprised, I told her a man in Lakeland had deeded to his wife, his half-interest in their home. It had to do with him owing $40,000 in back-child-support payments to his ex-wife, and he didn’t want her to be able to put a lien on the house where he and his second wife lived.

Many months after that incident, the couple was divorcing. He told her he wanted his half of the house. She mentioned the deed he had signed, but he countered with words which utterly dumbfounded his wife. They were to the effect of, “I didn’t sign that deed. Someone forged my signature.”

Wow!

His wife commented that they had gone to a notary’s home to have the deed signed and notarized, and there were also two witnesses to the event. Further, the community-service lawyer who had prepared the paperwork would testify that both the husband and the wife had come by to pick up the documents before they continued on to the notary’s house.

I clearly had the process server’s attention, but there was something missing—my part in all of this.

I told her, “I am an expert regarding signatures, for personality analysis and whether they are forgeries.”

Now her eyes did open wide, but, at the same time, she seemed a little wary. Of course, in my experience, the way to defeat such a reaction is always the next logical step.

I looked at the top page of the subpoena, and in the upper-right corner were two handwritten initials, and the date. I asked her if they were her initials, and also if that was her “signature.”

She was more compliant than I might have thought, and said she uses only her initials as her full signature.

“All right,” I said, “what would you like to know about yourself?”

Talk about a shocker of a question! Her reaction was more than I was hoping for. But it didn’t take long for her to recover. She peeked around the edge of the paperwork to see exactly what she had written up in the corner, and then looked back up at me.

With just her initials, and only one of them legible—J, then something—I asked her full name. She said she was Janet Garcia. Fine.

I asked about her last name, and if it was the initial of her married name. She said it was. I commented that it looked more like a capital A or H, than a G, but she said this is how she writes it, all the time. Fine, again.

I pondered the two letters further, and Janet stood by. She didn’t seem ready to leave anytime soon, and I was pretty certain this was not just a great anomaly in her day, but likely in her week, month, year, and possibly her entire process-serving career.

I told her she is happily married, and has a good relationship with her husband.

To this she nodded, but it didn’t seem like much of a stretch, regarding “reading” a signature.

I told her it was more than that. If she was out shopping for clothes for herself, and saw something which would be for her husband, she would buy it. Actually, closer to the mark is, if she saw something she thought would look good on her husband, maybe a shirt or pair of shorts, that is why she would buy it, and not merely because he needs another shirt so I will get this one. No, the purchase would be backed by love.

This was also a bit of a shocker, but she nodded.

I told her the relative size of one’s names is significant, comparing first and last. But here, while there were no names, per se, just initials, it worked the same way. Her J and G were roughly the same size. Of course, the lower portion of her J would have gone well below the line, if there had been one, but the top parts of the letters were almost identical in size, and fairly large. That has a similar comparison with how she felt about her husband, all very positive, and they were on an equal footing in their marriage.

Her G is more in the style of the “G ” on the General Mills cereal boxes, and not like a

lowercase g, but just much larger. And she had written it stylistically, literally tilting to the left so it was touching and seemingly engaged with the end of her letter J. It was something I had not seen before, but it was obvious to me what it meant. She felt the two of them were so close in their relationship, that in her signature, she actually intertwined the end of her letter and the start of his. It was like a couple in a park, holding hands as they strolled down the path.

I commented that there is such a thing as a “manager’s signature,” where the first initial is very large, but the rest of the letters in the name are much diminished, and some are missing entirely. A good friend and manager of more than 500 people, was where this idiosyncrasy first drew my attention. Asked about—why the missing letters, and some, much smaller, almost not readable—she analogized to a large project she might have. She would deal with the most important matters, but for the smaller aspects, “Staff will handle them.” So, it is for the lowercase letters in the manager’s signature. They weren’t important to her and were eliminated.

But Janet’s was more than that. In using only initials, and written boldly, she showed a very forceful way of presenting herself. And about all the missing letters—she didn’t need them—she would handle everything. She saw herself as taking on any project with her own ability and skill, and completing it.

A good example might be the mere act of making a successful subpoena delivery, especially if the individual sought was one of the hard-to-finds, where success felt like a real accomplishment. That is all part of the personality of someone, one of the rare individuals, who signs only with initials, large and bold ones. Also, she sees her partner-in-life so enmeshed with herself and her personality in their relationship, that she would scribe each of their initials so close they were, more than just touching, but overlapping.

All of that was Janet Garcia.

Well, I didn’t go into every one of those details for her as we stood on my doorstep, but I did cover enough of them for her to realize there actually might be something to this reading signatures thing.

When I was finally deposed in Lakeland several days later—had driven the 216-miles—it was a triumph for signature analysis. I clarified that, in fact, the husband had signed his own name, no matter how circular and sloppy he had made the scrawl. He just didn’t know enough about signatures to convincingly pretend his own had been forged. He would lose in his quest to deceive and benefit through his fraudulent effort.

Good riddance to him, for my client. And thanks to signature analysis for another good conclusion.

Regarding the deposition, by its end, we were all making comments that were off-the- record. I know most people, at first glance, think reading signatures is a parlor trick, with nothing to it. But by way of demonstrating another I had done recently, I raised the name of my subpoena process server and the story of her initials-only-signature. After my analysis, she had concurred with everything I said. I am sure this was the first time such an incident had taken place in her life. But it tended to emphasize, much more, for the deposing attorney, that this—part- psychology, part-art, and part-science—skill, can be used almost anywhere and everywhere.

As if on-cue, the attorney brought out a yellow, ruled pad and boldly wrote out his own signature. Not a surprise to me, but even after two-and-a-half hours of deposition, he still needed to see for himself.

For the next ten minutes, I told the attorney all about himself, his relationship with his family, his work ethic, how the lower-tier colleagues in his office saw him and thought of him, and how idiosyncrasies in his signature would show up in other aspects of his life. He was pretty silent the entire time.

I look forward to hearing from him in the future, when another client claims his signature has been forged—and the lawyer wants to know the truth.

Wayne A. Barnes

Plantation, FL

October 27, 2022