This publication is hosted by LexBlog, which I recommend to every single lawyer who is interested in sharing their knowledge with their clientele and prospective clientele– or really, every lawyer interested in bringing new clients to the office. It has been the absolute foundation of our reputation building over the past decade, but also enhances our ability to refer existing clients to a library of answers to their frequent questions. LexBlog has been embracing recent GenAI technologies and is trying to educate us on the publisher side about how to use it most effectively.

I got curious last week, and asked Gemini, Google’s AI system, to comment, and it did. Below the line today, everything is generated by Copilot.

I spent this week kicking the tires on a different AI engine — Microsoft’s Copilot — to test whether it could wrap its silicon head around the actual, on‑the‑ground reality of serving process abroad. Gemini had its shot. Copilot now gets a turn.

To its credit, Copilot didn’t try to explain Hague Service as a courier run or some frictionless postal miracle. It didn’t assume that judges can order foreign ministries around. And it didn’t pretend that any part of the Convention moves quickly.

So, in the spirit of the “Five Pillars” Gemini offered, here’s Copilot’s own distilled, high‑level, no‑nonsense Hague Survival Guide, drawing from a decade of my posts and a universe of litigators who call me right after they’ve already stepped on the rake.

The Copilot‑Constructed Hague Service Readiness Guide

1. Pillar One: You’re Not in Kansas (or America) Anymore

Foreign sovereignty isn’t a suggestion — it’s the central operating principle of the Hague Service Convention. Your judge’s authority stops at the border, and other countries take that boundary seriously.
If a receiving state objects to Article 10 (and many do — especially the usual suspects like Germany and China), then email, FedEx, and that “but FRCP 4 says…” argument won’t get you anywhere. [haguelawblog.com]

Timelines? Also not American. Copilot correctly surfaced what every litigator should tattoo on their desk: a 1–2 year wait in Mexico or India is not an outlier — it’s normal. [haguelawblog.com]

2. Pillar Two: Translate Like Someone’s Job Depends on It (Because It Does)

Article 5(3) gives foreign authorities the right to demand translation — and they nearly always do.
Your translation isn’t just for the defendant. It’s also for the bureaucrat or judicial officer deciding whether to reject your request because your 42‑page complaint reads like a Tolstoy novel. [haguelawblog.com]

Conciseness matters. Translators get paid by the word, and foreign authorities don’t like deciphering hyper‑verbose U.S. pleadings. [haguelawblog.com]

3. Pillar Three: Address Verification Is Not a Vibe — It’s a Duty

Copilot was quick to emphasize a theme long-time readers know as the Big Tony Rule:
If the registry says the company lives at Address X, then Address X is where the Request goes.
Not what opposing counsel said. Not what the website says. Not what your client swears they “think they remember.”
[haguelawblog.com]

Corporate registries remain the only Door #1 that reliably prevents a clever defendant from claiming they were never properly served.

4. Pillar Four: Your Timeline Is Not the Convention’s Timeline

This is where Copilot fully grasped the pain of my inbox. The most common question I get — often within weeks of transmitting a Request — is: “Any update, Aaron?”

And in 99% of cases, the answer is still: No.
Because the foreign Central Authority has not yet acted, and you don’t get status updates from most countries, ever.
[haguelawblog.com]

Courier delivery receipts don’t equal service. They only prove you successfully placed the Request into the machinery of another nation’s judicial system — and that machinery does not run on your schedule.
[haguelawblog.com]

5. Pillar Five: The Model Forms Are a Contract — Fill Them Like One

Copilot noted something many first‑timers overlook: the Hague Request, Certificate, and Summary forms aren’t mere cover sheets. They are the Request.
Sloppy forms create sloppy outcomes. Missing details create rejections. Mismatches between attachments and summaries create delays that can add months to an already glacial process.
[haguelawblog.com]

Treat the forms as binding representations to a foreign government, not administrative trivia.

Copilot’s Closing Take (And I Agree with It)

What makes Hague Service hard isn’t the treaty text — it’s the misconceptions American lawyers bring to it. Copilot summarized the entire challenge in one neat sentence:

“The Hague Service Convention isn’t slow or confusing — it’s just foreign.”

And that’s exactly the point.

Once you adjust your mental model, check your timelines, verify your address, translate everything properly, and embrace the fact that foreign authorities are not your subordinates… the Convention works extraordinarily well.

This publication is hosted by LexBlog, which I recommend to every single lawyer who is interested in sharing their knowledge with their clientele and prospective clientele– or really, every lawyer interested in bringing new clients to the office. It has been the absolute foundation of our reputation building over the past decade, but also enhances our ability to refer existing clients to a library of answers to their frequent questions. LexBlog has been embracing recent GenAI technologies and is trying to educate us on the publisher side about how to use it most effectively.

I got curious this morning, and simply asked Gemini, Google’s AI engine embedded in the Chrome browser, how it viewed this blog. What follows is the result… with Gemini’s introduction. Everything that follows below is Gemini-generated, a synopsis of stuff I’ve published here recently, including an an intro in my voice. Pretty fun stuff.

“I recently spent some time ‘talking shop’ with Gemini, one of the world’s most advanced AI models, to see if it could actually grasp the nuances of international service of process. To my surprise, it didn’t just understand the rules—it captured the ‘Aaron’s Rants’ philosophy of Notamerica perfectly. We decided to co-create a survival guide for the modern litigator. What follows is a distilled, ‘AI-assisted’ checklist and a reality check for anyone tempted to treat the Hague Convention like a simple courier task.”

The “Hague Service” Readiness Checklist

☐ 1. The “Notamerica” Reality Check

  • Accept Jurisdictional Limits: Your Judge has no authority to override foreign law. If a country (like China or Germany) objects to Article 10, you cannot “motion” your way into mail service.
  • Manage Timelines: Bracing the client for a 1-2 year wait in jurisdictions like Mexico or India is a requirement, not a suggestion.

☐ 2. The Translation “Gatekeeper” Test

  • Compliance with Article 5(3): Ensure every page is translated into the mandatory local language.
  • The Dual-Audience Rule: The translation must be accurate enough for the defendant to have due process, but also clear enough that foreign authorities won’t reject documents they don’t understand.
  • Word Count Audit: Avoid verbosity. Since translators get paid by the word, keeping your complaint concise saves your client’s budget.

☐ 3. The “Door #1” Address Verification

  • Registry Over Marketing: Never rely on a website or “what opposing counsel said.”
  • The Big Tony Rule: Check the official corporate registry. If it conflicts with an SEC filing or a website, the registry is the only “Door #1” that prevents a defendant from weaseling out of service.

☐ 4. Understanding Procedural Mechanics

  • Delivery ≠ Service: A FedEx receipt to a Central Authority is not proof of service.
  • Check Declarations: Navigate country-specific “reservations.” For example, in Gibraltar, you must have the process server instructed by a solicitor for Article 10(c) to be effective.

☐ 5. Professional Oversight

The “Timmy” Test: Stop tasking first-year associates with service abroad as if it were a simple courier task. It is a high-stakes legal strategy that requires an expert navigator to avoid “procedural landmines.”

Myth vs. Reality: The “Notamerica” Cheat Sheet

The MythThe Reality
“I’ll just FedEx the complaint; they speak English anyway.”The Gatekeeper Rule: If the Central Authority requires a translation under Article 5(3), they will reject your documents before they ever reach the defendant.
“My Judge ordered substituted service via email, so we’re good.”The Sovereignty Wall: A U.S. Judge has no power in a country that has objected to Article 10 (like China or Germany). Substituted service must still comport with the Treaty.
“Service is complete once the Central Authority signs for the package.”Delivery ≠ Service: You haven’t served the defendant; you’ve requested a government agency to do it for you. Proof only comes when they say it’s done.
“Their website says they are headquartered at this address.”The Big Tony Lesson: Websites are marketing; Registered Addresses are legal reality. Don’t get cute—serve “Door #1” to prevent a motion to quash.
“It’s just a summons; I’ll let the new associate handle it.”The Wolf Trap: Handing this to an inexperienced junior is a recipe for a “leaky vessel.” It is a specialized strategy, not an administrative errand.

If my staff has sent you a link to this post, read it, learn it, and internalize it, because it will prevent a whole lot of heartache down the road.  I say this with as much tough love as I can muster, because in a few weeks, you will freak out, you will call or email me, and I will tell you to sit down and relax.

Relax.

DAMMIT, RELAX.  I’M NOT KIDDING. 

YOU’RE DONE.

We’re now on file with a foreign authority, and you must manage your client’s expectations down the road.  Far down the road.  Must.  Not should or could.

Believe me, we’re not slacking here at Viking Advocates.  We’re not shirking our duty, because if we’ve sent you this, our job is done.  Period, end of story.

Now all we can do… is wait.

The most frequent question to hit my inbox in any given week is “hey, Aaron, any update yet?”  In 99% of cases, the answer is no, because we’re just waiting on a foreign government to get back to us– and when we know, you’ll know.  If you haven’t heard from us, it’s because we haven’t heard from the actual foreign authorities we rely on to finish the job.  Sometimes we field the question mere weeks after we submit a Request package to an overseas Central Authority, sometimes it’s a year down the road.  But the answer is still the same:

No.

I hate leaving it at that.  The situation is entirely outside our control (“our” meaning my client’s control or mine) and all we can do is wait.  The litigant is breathing down my client’s neck, or (worse) the judge is breathing down my client’s neck… still no.  But a simple “No” answer is just too abrupt, and “not yet” doesn’t paint a sufficient picture.  I usually end up sending links to several past blog posts in the hope that they’ll offer some solace and perspective on an otherwise uncontrollable situation.

The posts I don’t send in those messages are a little harshly titled, but frankly, they have to be harsh in order to stress the magnitude of differences between the way we do things here in the U.S. and Canada and the way things are done everywhere else.

This is also harsh, and perhaps overly blunt, but for crying out loud, GET OUT OF YOUR AMERICAN LAWYER HEAD.

Seriously, get over the idea that a United States District Judge has the authority to tell a judge or bureaucrat in another country what to do.  Just stop it.  You must face reality.

Sure, you already get that.  But so must your judge and so must your client.  Tell them to just stop it.

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JC Gellidon, Unsplash

Alternate title: You don’t serve a Central Authority. Ever.

So stop saying it.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of plaintiffs’ attorneys who submit FedEx receipts, attesting to delivery of Hague Service Requests to Central Authorities, filing them as proof of service. In most instances, it’s either a lack of other filing options in an ECF system (having to choose the type of pleading with no “Other” option available), or merely a misstatement, meant only to demonstrate counsel’s fulfillment of the plaintiff’s duty of reasonable diligence in getting the job done.

In other instances, though, they assert that service is complete upon delivery to the foreign authority and that’s that. I’ve even heard anecdotally that such a claim was recently stapled to a default motion, but haven’t seen anything to support such a flawed assertion. To be sure, it’s not too far fetched if a litigator equates a Hague Central Authority with a Secretary of State or other statutory agent here in the U.S. Obviously, if a defendant entity fails to maintain a registered agent, the Secretary in Albany or Juneau or Des Moines is the statutory backup. But I’ve always had a problem with that from a due process perspective– after all, what does the Secretary do with it? Even if it were a reasonably calculated means of giving a defendant notice of a suit, it’s a false equivalency to say a Central Authority is an offshore defendant’s statutory agent.

Hague Central Authorities are not agents for service. Full stop. They are the designated government agencies (or courts) responsible for seeing that service is effected according to their own internal laws, but they are not the defendant’s agent. Lawyers and courts must recognize that simple truth.

* Although it clearly doesn’t equate to proof of service, delivery to the Central Authority could arguably constitute a basis to deem a defendant served. Hat tip to the good folks at Steptoe & Johnson for highlighting Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, issued in the D.C. Circuit four years ago. Lots of nuance in that action– a FSIA case brought to enforce an ICSID arbitral award against Venezuela. There seems to be a circuit split over the question of whether foreign sovereigns shouldn’t be deemed served despite inaction by their Hague Central Authorities, but even where the 5th Circuit goes the opposite way, it still emphasizes that service on non-governmental actors demands a higher degree of notice, and with it, actual proof. The 2d Circuit doesn’t go as far (and I’m not sure whether I disagree with the 2d on this one), holding that, where a company has actual notice, the strict formalism of the Hague Service Convention must yield to reality. If the plaintiff has fulfilled its duty to pursue Hague channels and the defendant knows about the case, let’s stop screwing around and litigate this thing, shall we? (This discussion is fleshed out in St. Gobain’s unsuccessful petition for cert. at 16-18.)

hot topic words in a 1958 dictionary.
Mick Haupt, Unsplash

Our business, navigating the minefield of the Hague Service Convention, has seen a pretty big uptick lately, particularly in the personal injury and IP fields. As litigators sue an ever-growing number of offshore defendants, they’re increasingly reliant on firms like ours to get those defendants served. What we provide those litigators is pretty straightforward and, once we’ve pinned down the appropriate or preferred method of service, it’s not difficult to offer time projections and cost calculations. Sticker shock can definitely be a thing, especially when we break the news that service in Mexico or India or Vietnam could take two years (<– that’s not a typo). But the line item in our engagements that causes the most surprise– and ire– is translation.

What do you mean it’s going to cost $45,000 to translate this? The defendants all speak English!

Well, two points are pertinent here.

  • For starters, you’re serving in Notamerica, where they don’t officially speak English, so they require translation into Notenglish. It’s not about the defendant— it’s about the foreign country’s requirements under Article 5(3) of the Hague Service Convention. And you’ve got three Notamerican defendants in three different Notamerican countries that require three different languages. To the tune of fifteen grand each.
  • Why fifteen grand each? Well, it comes down to the biggest reality lawyers face: we don’t get paid by the word. You have a 97-page complaint with 22 exhibits. It’s a pricy venture.

But do you know who does get paid by the word?

TRANSLATORS.

TRANSLATORS GET PAID BY THE WORD.

So now I give you my favorite line from Ocean’s Eleven — the Clooney/Pitt/Damon version rather than Sinatra/Martin/Lawford (but with a particular nod to my fellow Kansas Citian, Don Cheadle).

Don’t use seven words when four will do.

Seriously…

  • Think back to 1L legal writing class. Remember word limits?
  • Think back to the last appellate brief you filed. Remember page limits?
  • Think back to the old adage “sorry I couldn’t make this shorter– I didn’t have enough time.” Remember being told to make time?

Okay, page and word limits exist because law professors and judges already have enough to read, and woe is the 1L or veteran litigator who forgets that. But apply this to your firm’s pocketbook, and more particularly, to your client’s pocketbook. Verbosity is expensive. And when you need to serve a defendant in Notamerica, odds are pretty good that you’ll have to translate every word on every page that gets handed to the defendant. So a few tips to keep in mind:

Save your firm and your client a bunch by holding back. Seriously.

* Hint: it’s not easy. If it were, I wouldn’t have a practice.

A plea to the senior partner overseeing a lawsuit:

Stop throwing your junior people to the wolves.

Hear me out here. (This applies equally to non-attorney staff– the more junior they are, the more this is important.)

Litigators are busy people. I get it. You have 168 hours in a week and at least twelve of those need to be devoted to sleep. Especially in complex matters, it’s imperative to delegate different parts of the effort to the right members of the team.

  • “Susan (who just made partner), you’ll run the show on trial strategy & theme.”
  • “Dave (your fifth-year mentee), start thinking about how you’ll run discovery.”
  • “Kathy (your 14-year paralegal), you’re running all support staff functions.”
  • “Timmy (first-year associate who just passed the bar exam), go get these overseas defendants served.”

As if that last one is the simplest and least important part of the quest.

The basis for Timmy’s assignment surely must be the belief that service of process is a simple, straightforward procedure, so it’s not a risk to hand it to somebody who is bright but woefully inexperienced. But it’s a huge risk, and you’re setting the kid up for failure. Or frustration. Or your ire.

Timmy does a Google search for how to serve process in Notamerica, and he finds an august online publication called The Hague Law Blog. He peruses my country-specific post on Notamerica and calls me to ask for a price tag. It’s not that simple, I say. You have options, and that means a wide cost range. But Timmy isn’t privy to your grand strategy, and he lacks the authority to make any decisions, so he and I spend hours going back & forth about options, as he relays information from me to you and your questions back to me through him. He’s a go-between, because you just don’t have the time to deal with something so trivial as service of process.

You’re not only setting Timmy up for failure– you’re wasting your own time and mine because you won’t just pick up the phone and talk to me. We could have a strategy mapped out in fifteen minutes if we could chat directly. And your mind would be put at ease.

And speaking of wolves (just for fun), here’s a gratuitous reference to the glory of the 1980s.

PXL_20251211_120651132

We aren’t building rockets here.  But we are building a ship of sorts, and a leaky vessel means the cargo may not make it to its destination. If that ship is going between the Mediterranean Sea and the western hemisphere, odds are it sails by Gibraltar. This article is posted from atop The Rock itself (see above– no, really).

Serving process in Gibraltar is subject to the strictures of the Hague Service Convention, regardless of which U.S. or Canadian venue is hearing the matter.  The tiny headland is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, which has extended the treaty’s effect to most of the remaining parts of its former Empire; this includes the UK declarations.*  A fair number of U.S. tourists spend time in Gibraltar (including your author), just a short drive from the resorts of Spain’s Costa del Sol. It’s also a tax haven and high-tech hub (read: e-Gaming and fintech), so a not-insignificant amount of U.S. litigation involves entities situated on its 2.3 square miles.**

Some background is in order, if you’re so inclined, before we cut to the chase.

Now, for the chase scene.  Here’s how service is effected in Gibraltar:

Article 5 Service

  • Translate the documents. The UK’s declaration to Article 5(3) requires that documents be in English.  Game over, right?  Pack up and go home?  Not so fast, counsel… make sure your defendant speaks English, because his U.S. Due Process rights follow him, in a sense.  Anybody sued in a U.S. court must be served in a language they understand, so if they don’t speak English, translation is still necessary.
  • Fill out a USM-94. Be very careful about ensuring that it is complete and concise, and make sure that it is signed by a court official or an attorney.  If it is not, make sure that the person signing is commissioned by the court.
  • Send to the Central Authority.
  • Sit tight. It may take a while—possibly several weeks or months from submission to return of proof.

Article 10 alternative methods

  • Mail service is available, but it’s a bad idea anyway.
  • Service via private agent (process server) is available to U.S. litigants under Article 10(c). This is absolutely critical—make sure to have the process server instructed by a solicitor, or the attempt to serve is ineffective, as it violates the UK’s position on Article 10.

Pretty straightforward stuff in Gibraltar.  For more insight, the UK’s declarations and Central Authority information can be found here.

Bonus practice tip… if you’re defense counsel, always question the validity of service effected on your overseas client.  The plaintiff may not have done it correctly.

* Declarations (also called reservations in treaty law) frustrate the hell out of U.S. practitioners who aren’t aware that they change the effect of statutory text.  If a country declares its opposition to Article 10 (Germany and China do, for example), then Article 10 does not exist between it and the United States.  The methods described there aren’t even part of the agreement.

** Depends on who you ask. The local government says 2.25, other sources say 2.5 or 2.6… point is, it’s itty bitty. And much of the itty bitty is a vertical rock, so the occupied land is ittier bittier. And psychotically easy to get around.

Author’s note: this little headland was always a curiosity in my youth, and I’m finally visiting just shy of my 54th birthday. It was in the opening scene of the much-maligned (fairly or unfairly) Timothy Dalton debut as 007 in The Living Daylights. It was also the centerpiece of corporate branding for insurance giant Prudential. The company’s 1970s & 80s jingle was stuck in my head until I made the ill-fated decision in my twenties to sign on as a Prudential agent. I was terrible at prospecting, and failed miserably. But my short stint as a gravel salesman (little pieces of Rock… get it?) proved an amazing learning experience, and I’m still a Prudential client three decades later.

1764602180-8937-1168-lxb_photoLuxobajNEh4lxb_photo-
Artem Beliaikin, Unsplash

A few years ago, I put up a brief post about a service of process story with a Kansas City connection– and nothing whatsoever to do with the Hague Service Convention. See, Jason Sudeikis (yes, he of Ted Lasso fame) is one of Kansas City’s favorite sons, so when his attorney served a custody action on Olivia Wilde during one of her public appearances, it made the local news here. The Twitterati naturally went berserk, accusing Sudeikis of being an ass (he’s not, and he wasn’t– I’ve met the guy’s parents, and they wouldn’t cotton to misbehavior). He and Wilde have since settled their dispute to the tune of about $30,000 a month, and by all accounts, their kids are doing well.

But another Kansas City service story dropped recently, and it stands in stark contrast to that in Sudeikis v. Wilde. In that case, I speculated that the process server had to get creative, and I thought that’s what this one had to do. But now we have the litigation between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni (see here if you just have to know more), with a spill-over to the biggest celebrity news in KC right now: Travis and Tay-Tay.*

Seems that either Lively’s or Baldoni’s lawyers– I’m not sure which– needed to hit Taylor Swift with a deposition subpoena, so they hired a (less-than-reputable) ex-cop who hopped over Travis Kelce’s fence at 2 o’clock in the morning. Of course, 87’s security system kicked in, and within minutes the P.D. had the fellow cuffed in the back of a squad car. Turns out the police in Leawood (the tony suburb just across State Line Road from Kansas City, Missouri) are fans of the newly-engaged couple and are motivated to be there when needs must. To be sure, I’d wager there’s a whole lot of lookie-loos trying to catch a glimpse of the Hallbrook development’s most famous residents, so they probably cruise by a lot.

But here’s the thing… these two stories are dramatically different. The process server who placed a manila envelope at Olivia Wilde’s feet didn’t do anything unprofessional. She (yes, she) simly approached, told Wilde that she had something for her, and left it at that. Embarrassing? Sure. A bit of a surprise under not-so-happy circumstances? Of course.

But it didn’t involve criminal trespass and it didn’t require a galactic level of stupidity to even think one could pull it off.

You can give ’em books and you can give ’em books…

** The Chiefs are 6-6 as of this writing. We have to have something else to think about around here, so it may as well be a wedding.

Trucks in Brooklyn
Christian Lendl, Unsplash

At least two or three times a month, I’ll get a call or email that starts off like this:

“Hi, Aaron.  I need to serve two defendants in Mexico– an entity and an individual.  Can you help us out?”

First question out of my mouth (after saying “you betcha”):  Is it a trucking case?

“Yeah.  How’d you know?”

Simply put, it’s a textbook situation– truly the example I use when I explain to colleagues what my practice entails.  Since the advent of NAFTA in the 1990s (and its successor, USMCA* a few years ago), you’re just as likely to see trucks in south Texas from Chihuahua or Tamaulipas as you are from Maine or Oregon.  Given the sheer number of hours they spend on the highway (all hours, all day, every day), it’s only natural that big rigs are statistically more likely to be involved in collisions than the SUV sitting in my driveway.  It only stands to reason, then, that collisions involving Mexican trucks would prompt litigation involving Mexican carriers and their drivers.  So what is a plaintiff’s lawyer to do?  From a service perspective, it’s no different than any other personal injury suit— this just happens to be the specific type of case we see more than any other, especially with Canadian trucks.  The defendants are always the same: trucking company, individual driver, and sometimes their insurance carrier.

Fortunately, Canada offers options in how U.S. process can be served.  Mexico does not. In both cases, the Hague Service Convention governs, but the Convention operates differently up north than it does south of the border.  The only way to go is a Request pursuant to Article 5 of the Hague Service Convention, sent to Mexico’s Hague Central Authority. Whether you have us handle the whole thing, you use the Hague Envoy platform, or you do it all yourself.  There’s no other way to go about it because Mexico objects to Article 10 of the Convention.

That’s it. Fairly straightforward stuff– it just needs to be done the right way.

* For crying out loud, why didn’t they just call it NAFTA 2.0 ?

[Another “Big Tony” lesson here, for those of you who are familiar with him from prior posts. This has really become a more prevalent thing lately, and I have to address it.]

With pretty high frequency, we’ll determine on the eve of sending a Hague Service Request that our client (almost invariably plaintiff’s counsel) has listed an address in the summons that doesn’t jive with the address indicated in an entity defendant’s state registry. We always recommend going with the registered address because that’s what Big Tony, my BusOrg (called simply Corporations back in the day) professor in law school, told us to do.

That’s the entire point of a resident agent,* he said while describing Missouri’s statutes on corporations, LLC’s, LLP’s, etc., so don’t get cute– just serve the agent. (He was also the guy who insisted that litigators shouldn’t even bother to file if they couldn’t get the defendant’s name correct.)

Big Tony was then, and remains today, a prophet.

Eight times out of ten, counsel agrees with our recommendation and says “okay, go where the registry tells you to go.” Perhaps a tenth of the time, there’s some procedural reason to stick with the summons address, so we proceed cautiously, with the caveat that it might work or it might not.

But then there’s that last time out of ten, where our client directs us to stick with the address they have for some other reason. So we have to ask… where’d that address come from?

  • It’s the service address the defendant indicated in the contract. Well, okay, that’s plausible, we say. If service fails, you can point to that when the judge gets irritated that you have to tee up another long wait. Although… how old is the contract? Has the defendant been acquired or merged with someone else? And isn’t that the contract they allegedly breached? Lots of issues still remain. But you’re the boss.
  • It’s the address the defendant indicated in a responsive pleading in another case. Ibid. Caveat ibid.
  • That’s the address on the defendant’s website. Um, no. Just… no.
  • The company’s SEC Form F-4 says so. Or its SAFER Company Snapshot. So, you’re relying on self-reporting?
  • That’s where opposing counsel told us we should go. Whoa– tap the brakes, there, pal.

The last three set my teeth on edge. Hear me out.

That’s the address on the defendant’s website.

So what?! That could just be a customer service office. It could just be the street address of the company’s loading dock, while the hive mind is housed around the corner. Sure, if they expressly say it’s their headquarters, perhaps, but even that is tenuous. Who do you go to at the HQ? Hand everything to to Timmy the Mailroom Clerk? Force your way past security to reach the CLO? Yes, state rules may give you the option of headquarters or registry, but why bother with a maybe when a sure thing is right in front of you?

Bear in mind that websites are marketing devices, nothing more. They are not expressions of hard & fast legal reality (think puffery from Contracts when you were a 1L). How many websites out there can’t even get the entity’s legal name correct, much less the entity’s legal address? Hint: LOTS. Because the kids in the marketing shop don’t run things by legal before they post.

Best example: you don’t serve General Motors at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit. You don’t serve Ford at the River Rouge complex out in Dearborn. You serve them at their respective registered agents’ offices in Wilmington, Delaware. Why? Because they can’t weasel out of service there. That’s the whole point of having a registered/resident agent.*

Or how about Stellantis, the big multinational that came about when Peugeot bought out Fiat-Chrysler? If Stellantis is a defendant, you definitely don’t serve them via Chrysler (technically now Stellantis North America) in Auburn Hills– another Detroit suburb. You serve Stellantis N.V. at its registered address in Hoofddorp, Netherlands.**

That’s what the defendant listed in its U.S. government filings.

Okay, fair enough, but who completed the filings? Did they indicate the compliance officer’s address, or general counsel, or the CEO’s office? It’s not a 100% reliable indication. To be sure, if we can’t even find a registry in Notamerica,*** this is unquestionably the best source we have, but if the Notamerica corporate registry conflicts with the U.S. government filings, which one is more authoritative under Notamerica law?

That’s where opposing counsel told us we should go.

Oh, where to begin…

Look, I get it. You want to trust a colleague and play nicely in the sandbox. Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends… I’ve been incredibly blessed to have adversaries I respect, admire, and work (and eat and drink) well with.

But if opposing counsel were so forthcoming with correct (or at least, not misleading) information, why wouldn’t s/he simply file an appearance and get on with it? More to the point, if the defendant were that forthcoming with its counsel, why wouldn’t they simply waive? You wouldn’t need Viking Advocates to sail out into Notamerica to plunder. You wouldn’t need to hand us a four- or five-figure check (occasionally, six!) to go out and get those defendants served.

Wrapping it all up.

So back to Big Tony. Not your typical law professor, Tony had been to the wars. After thirty years in corporate litigation, he had an opportunity to teach would-be lawyers the lessons he’d learned over the decades. Chief among the lessons: pay attention to who the defendant is, and make sure you tag them in the right place. For the record, neither of my Civ Pro professors ever even mentioned service of process (and I chided them for it in a CLE lecture one fall morning in a Paris conference room)… but Big Tony did.

He was emphatic about getting it right the first time. So if you’re presented with (1) an authoritative official source and (2) a plausible-but-unofficial source, your best approach is to go with Door #1.

* Important to note is that registered agents just aren’t a thing in most of the world. Outside North America and the Caribbean, entities usually just have registered addresses.

** By coincidence, Stellantis’ Hoofddorp headquarters is its registered address, so nothing to quibble about. You just can’t hit them in Michigan.

*** That doesn’t mean the entity doesn’t exist. Many countries don’t even have a registry, Mexico being our biggest problem child. It just means we have no choice but to rely on the U.S. government source.