Q: Can a court from Different state subpoena me to provide copies of my lease agreement. I'm in VA, court is in OK?
My tenant in my rental home is going through a child custody battle. She lives in my rental property in SC. I live in Virginia and I received a Subpoena for a copy of our lease agreement from a lawyer/court in Oklahoma. I thought you could only subpoena court records within the same state/county? I have no dog in the fight so I really don't care but just was curious if I must comply legally?
A:
Just confirming: The Subpoena is issued by the Oklahoma court and not from a Virginia court based on an Oklahoma request? Look closely at the caption: Are any of the captions from a Virginia court? If not, Oklahoma has no jurisdiction in Virginia, so compliance with the Oklahoma subpoena cannot be enforced in Virginia unless you happen to trot through Oklahoma when someone is looking.
But, the Law can be a tricky mistress. You might visit Oklahoma, or the husband's Oklahoma lawyer might think of a really cool jurisdictional argument, like that you have real estate in OK and this is litigation regarding that real estate so there is in rem jurisdiction over the real estate, which they've effectuated by posting the property and sending you a copy. If they tried hard enough and there is some fact you're missing in your recitation, maybe it could stick. And, one with no dog in the fight generally doesn't want a bear eating his dog on the way home! (Terrible, anachronistic metaphor, btw; dog fighting is illegal, as Michael Vick learned in Virginia).
May I suggest that you contact the tenant and tell her that you've been subpoena'd, and ask her to tell her lawyer. Give her a deadline for the lawyer to call you. If the lawyer doesn't care about your compliance with the invalid subpoena, compliance will be cheaper than retaining an Okie lawyer. If the lawyer does care, the lawyer can take it from there and move to quash the subpoena.
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