Our firm routinely handles service in complex cases involving multiple defendants in multiple countries, nearly always pursuant to the Hague Service Convention. In many of those cases, two or three (or even more) defendants are domiciled at the same address– especially in cases involving several subsidiaries of global conglomerates. One would think that should produce some economies of scale, and in jurisdictions where a private method of service is available pursuant to Article 10(b), that’s usually the case. If my overseas process servers or bailiffs can tag multiple defendants in a single trip, they charge me less, and I pass those savings right along to my litigator clients. And even in what I term “Five-O countries,” where service can Only be effected pursuant to Article 5, we can rein in costs a bit thanks to commonality of the paperwork involved. Having the defendants served at the same address really doesn’t factor into it.
One would also think that, if we have multiple defendants to serve at the same address, they’re going to be served at the same time by the same official, who will generate proofs simultaneously and transmit them back to me in the same envelope.
Except, no. That’s not how bureaucracies work. Sure, it occasionally happens, if every single official in the chain of custody is on the ball. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. A broken clock is right twice a day. You get the idea.
More often than not, when my requests land on an official’s desk in Berlin or Seoul or New Delhi, they’re going to get separated and eventually sent to different judicial officers for service. And if Deurwaarder Dave is having an awesome day but Deurwaarder Doug had a nasty fight with his wife at breakfast, they’re probably going to get done at markedly different times. Early last February, I got proof on a request that I’d filed in Korea in September… it had been served in late October. Quick turnaround in my experience.
The one I sent with it? Served at the end of December. Two months after the first one. The Requests arrived in Seoul in the very same FedEx envelope, and the defendants were both housed on their parent company’s corporate campus. Yet they were served two months apart.
This is not to grouse, but to illustrate a little quirk of bureaucracies generally, and Hague Article 5 Service specifically. It’s perfectly normal, and not at all surprising.