Worst starting hand in Hold ‘Em.  You draw this… just fold it, man.

(See the author’s note below for clarification on which Hague Convention!)

A Hague Service Request, commonly known in the United States as a “USM-94” but also used in Canada, can be at once straightforward and daunting.  On the surface, it’s really just a fill-in-the-blank form.  But the devil is in the details, and when hell breaks loose in Georgia, the devil deals the cards.  It’s not as easy as it might seem, for a whole bunch of reasons.* Continue Reading How to Fill Out a Hague Convention Request

The Peace Palace, centerpiece of The Hague.

Let’s dig a little deeper into what that query truly means, because some variation of it pops into my inbox at least once or twice a month, from litigators in both the U.S. and Canada.  There’s a lot to unpack in those eight words, and a few things need to be clarified to get to the heart of the question, but the quick answer is… yes. Continue Reading “Do I have to go through the Hague?”

Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde in happier days. Daniel Benavides via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s a Hollywood story that’s relevant to Hague Service issues (I promise)…

Late last month, the story broke that Jason Sudeikis had a custody action served on Olivia Wilde while she was on stage, at a public event, announcing her new movie.  In front of a room full of fans and press and industry bigwigs, that’s got to be a shocker, and more than a bit embarrassing.  The Twitterati naturally went berzerk, throwing as much vitriol at the actor as they could muster. Continue Reading Manner of service overseas? It’s up to the authorities.

What did you just say, Mister Data?

Very regularly, clients will email me a batch of documents to have served on an offshore defendant and my staff* and I will get to work putting the paperwork together.  Occasionally, a document will jump off the screen at me and make me scratch my head in wonder. Continue Reading Hague defendants do not warrant special summonses.

Cherry. Nothing else comes close to such awesomeness.  Maybe Lime in a pinch.

Back in law school, I was always befuddled by those gunner types who insisted that no legal argument could be made without a case citation. The professor would ask a question and these guys (I use that in the non-gender-exclusive sense) would go thumbing through their casebooks and brief notes to find just the right response, because they’d swallowed too much law review Kool-Aid.

Meanwhile, we of the nuts & bolts persuasion (read: 50th percentile performers) would pull up a browser page and have an answer from Google far more quickly. Continue Reading Yes, counsel, you can use Google as a *starting* point. Wikipedia, too.