## Facts

- A Florida seller supplied fertilizer to a Florida farm on an ongoing open-account basis.
- The farm failed to pay amounts allegedly due on the account.
- An Alaska resident executed a guaranty promising payment of the farm’s indebtedness to the seller.
- The seller filed an amended complaint seeking a personal money judgment against the guarantor based on the guaranty.
- The seller had only a mailing address for the guarantor in Anchorage, Alaska and hired a licensed process server there to attempt personal service.
- The process server was unable to locate the guarantor for personal service.
- The seller then pursued constructive service by filing a sworn statement and publishing a notice of action in a Florida newspaper under Florida’s constructive-service statute.
- The guarantor appeared specially and moved to quash the service by publication, arguing that such service cannot support personal jurisdiction for a money judgment against a nonresident.

## Issues

1. Whether constructive service by publication is sufficient to confer jurisdiction to enter an in personam money judgment against a nonresident defendant on a guaranty.
2. Whether an alleged “purposeful avoidance” of personal service permits a court to rely on publication service to support an in personam judgment.
3. Whether entering a personal money judgment based solely on publication service would violate due process.

## Decision

- The appellate court reversed the nonfinal order denying the motion to quash service.
- Because the amended complaint sought a personal money judgment, the court required in personam jurisdiction over the guarantor.
- Constructive service by publication was held insufficient to confer in personam jurisdiction for that purpose.
- The trial court’s finding that the defendant purposefully avoided service did not change the jurisdictional limits of constructive service.

## Legal Principles

- A personal money judgment requires in personam jurisdiction over the defendant.
- Constructive service by publication confers only in rem or quasi in rem jurisdiction and cannot support an in personam judgment.
- A personal judgment entered against a defendant based solely on constructive service deprives the defendant of property without due process of law.
- The relief sought controls the jurisdictional analysis: when a plaintiff seeks damages against an individual defendant, personal jurisdiction cannot be established through publication alone.

## Conclusion

The court held that, because the plaintiff sought an in personam money judgment against an out-of-state guarantor, service by publication could not confer the required in personam jurisdiction; the order refusing to quash the constructive service was therefore reversed.


Honegger v. Coastal Fertilizer & Supply, Inc., 712 So. 2d 1161 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2d Dist. 1998)