[This rant is designed to guide my clients in getting the right paperwork generated for service by diplomatic channels. If I’ve sent you a link to this, that means you have to press the issue with your clerk of court– not because I want to create more work for the court staff, but the opposite.
Another statement we hear regularly from colleagues who very legitimately seek to save costs– and others who just want to shortcut the process in a super-cheap, super-quick way without worrying about proper procedure:
We’re going to serve alternatively instead of using the Hague.
Impossible to let that one go by without some discussion. Why? Because
TL;DR: think Miranda. Anything you say in a filing about proof of Hague Service could be used against you. So don’t say anything. Also, I’m a nerd who digs arcane Latin terms like probatur even though I never studied Latin.
A bit of background is in order here.
My firm’s primary job is
TL;DR… be patient. It’s a process.
Several years ago, I published a pair of posts that are even more important to keep in mind now, in a post-pandemic world:
The spring of 2019 seems like a decade
The Dutch– an exceedingly practical and direct people– have a saying: Goedkoop is Duurkoop. Cheap is expensive. We of the anglophone persuasion have a variation on that theme: you get what you pay for.
But the Dutch version captures reality far more forcefully. Cheap is expensive is an apt way of articulating the constant
A huge hat tip to my friend and fellow law blogger, Ted Folkman, for his Case of the Day post last week about Peanuts Worldwide v. The Partnerships and Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule A (N.D. Ill. 1:23-cv-02965).* He very deftly connected the dots
Over the years, I’ve posted in this space a couple of diatribes about the wisdom– or really, lack thereof– in a strict DIY (do-it-yourself) mentality in the practice of law. See here and here if you’re interested. Yes, I have a pecuniary interest, but I contend that a DIY approach to the Hague Service Convention
At least once or twice a month, when I deliver the bad news that service on an offshore defendant will cost several thousand dollars and take several months– if not a couple of years— a prospective client will decide that the better way to go is to seek an order for alternative service, usually
