Grimes employed four process servers between October 13 and October 20 to locate Musk, covering various locations such as X’s headquarters in San Francisco, SpaceX’s launch site in Boca Chica, Tesla’s Austin gigafactory, and addresses associated with Musk near Austin.
The exhaustive search even extended to a horse farm linked to the billionaire, revealing the lengths to which Grimes went to serve the custody papers. One process server even tracked Musk’s private jets to determine the best approach.
Despite persistent efforts, the process servers were turned away by security personnel and law enforcement on multiple occasions.
Timeline and Jurisdictional Implications
The papers were left with secondary personnel at Musk’s businesses, including X, Tesla, and SpaceX. Grimes argued that delivering the complaint to Musk’s security at X constituted sufficient proof of service, a point validated by legal experts.
Christopher Melcher, a California family lawyer, emphasized that Grimes’ team had made “more than reasonable efforts” to serve Musk. The challenges posed by Musk’s security detail, common for high-profile individuals, were acknowledged in legal circles. Melcher suggested that Musk’s potential argument for Grimes to try harder for personal service would be “completely silly.”
