The original case pitting Internet humor website The Oatmeal against the tenacious Arizona attorney Charles Carreon concluded back in July 2012. But that wasn't the last we would hear from Carreon, as The Oatmeal case spawned another that continues to move forward. And it contains equal amounts of unintentional humor and ridiculousness.

A blog penned by one "Satirical Charles" was spawned from The Oatmeal episode and now graces the Internet with its presence. Its author, Christopher Recouvreur, writes at charles-carreon.com (“censoreousdouchebag / The satirical diary about Charles Carreon”) in the voice of a fictional version of Carreon.

Not surprisingly, Carreon did not take too kindly to the site. He threatened to file a lawsuit against Recouvreur, accusing him of trademark infringement (as Carreon has a trademark on his own name) as well as cybersquatting. Back in June, Recouvreur's legal team filed a lawsuit seeking declaratory judgment, asking the court to certify that he had done nothing wrong in creating his website as he is protected under the First Amendment. But that new case has essentially been on hold since then, as Carreon has avoided being physically served with legal papers.

Recouvreur is represented by Paul Alan Levy, a well-known free speech attorney at Public Citizen, as well as Catherine Gellis, another San Francisco Bay Area tech lawyer.

On Monday, the attorneys representing Recouvreur filed a legal motion asking the court to compel Carreon to pay for their fees (around $300 in this case) to serve him with a Summons and Amended Complaint. Under federal law, the court can compel the defendant (Carreon) “to pay the costs of service unless the defendant can show good cause for the failure to return it.”

Plaintiff's counsel: "If anyone knows the rules, it would be [Carreon]."

As the case’s judge wrote in an October court filing, Carreon has been evading service for months. Carreon was finally served when Gellis waited for Carreon outside a court appearance in San Francisco on November 15. At any point during this process, Carreon could have waived personal service and been given 60 days to respond. Instead he avoided being served. Now that he has, he only has 21 days to act—Carreon is obligated to file his response by December 6, 2012.

Gellis told Ars that Carreon smiled when he received service and responded: “I’m not surprised [you found me.] Good job.’” Carreon did not respond to Ars’ requests for comment by phone or e-mail.

She added such behavior was highly unusual.

“This is not what would normally happen, especially for a fellow attorney,” she said.

“To have somebody run up the cost, unless there’s a legit reason for someone to evade service, is not normal. I don’t think it’s typical in general. I was very surprised this was the lengths we had to go to serve a fellow attorney. If anyone knows the rules, it would be him.”

Carreon previously mailed summons back

This case has now gone on for nearly half a year, with Carreon and his wife making rather acerbic public statements to their opposing counsel.

By July 2, Carreon’s wife, Tara Carreon, responded on her own website with this declaration: “And to Public Citizen's lawyer Paul Levy: Fuck you very much for filing a lawsuit on behalf of a cybersquatter's right to cybersquat, you corrupt fuck.”

Later in July, Carreon went after Recouvreur’s then-employer, Walgreens (PDF), on the supposition that Recouvreur had been working on the Satirical Charles website while at work (which turned out not to be the case). Recouvreur has since left being employed at Walgreens. Finally, by October, Levy and Gellis filed a “Motion to Declare Service Effective,” meaning they had gone to sufficient lengths to physically serve Carreon with papers.

Rather than summarize what happened next, we’ll let the judge in this case, Richard Seeborg, do that for us. Despite admittedly repeated efforts to serve Carreon, Seeborg denied (PDF) Recouvreur’s motion.

“Plaintiff’s counsel mailed defendant a request for waiver of summons to his address in Tucson, Arizona, which defendant did not execute. Instead, the entire envelope was mailed back to plaintiff, unopened, inside a second envelope. This same sequence of events was repeated after plaintiff filed an amended complaint. At plaintiff’s request, the Court issued a summons, and plaintiff hired an Arizona process service company to serve the summons at the residential address. On the first visit, the server announced himself and was told ‘No, thank you,’ and left with the papers. On the second and third visits, nobody answered. The process service company then tried to serve the summons and complaint by certified mail, but the package was never claimed.”

Seeborg said the process server had not gone to sufficient lengths to serve Carreon.

“The process server could easily wait outside the fence for defendant to enter or leave the residence and could then leave the papers in the defendant’s presence,” he wrote. “Alternatively, the process server may choose to wait near a location defendant is thought to frequent, such as an office or grocery store.”

It appears that is exactly what Gellis did.