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 Canada– 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?” Continue Reading Trucking injury cases and service in Canada
(Author’s note… we’ve just returned from two weeks in Scotland, and were to have posted this on September 16th, but held publication until after the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. We were in Edinburgh, a mere hundred miles away, when she passed on September 8th, and Edinburgh’s rainy, gray evening seemed appropriate. This is not an obituary, but publication is held until after the ceremony out of respect.) Continue Reading “Where?” is the most important question: The United Kingdom
In the lion’s share of cases, I recommend to clients that, in Hague jurisdictions where they’re available, a higher cost service option may actually end up saving their clients a chunk of change in the long run. In just about all of those jurisdictions, we charge considerably more to have a defendant served privately than if we go through government channels; that’s just the way things work. But the initial price tag can be deceiving. Continue Reading *Of course* it costs more, but go 10(b) if you can.
<— Unless this thing flies or used to fly over the jurisdiction where you’re serving, odds are pretty high that you’ll have to translate in order to satisfy the requirements of that jurisdiction under the Hague Service Convention. In most places, there’s no getting around it, even if your defendant was born in Chicago and taught Shakespeare for thirty years before settling in the Kobe Prefecture or a quaint village just outside Palermo. If you intend to serve him, foreign authorities will require a translation. Continue Reading Beware the lowest translation bidder– especially those who price by the page.
Another FAQ entry here, with a very simple response…
Since we’re serving this foreign defendant under Hague rules, do they get extra time to answer?
Nope. Continue Reading Extra time for the defendant? Not under the Hague Service Convention.
Author’s Note: This is far from a scholarly criticism– it is a nuts & bolts look at how this thing should go down. Preface:
Frankly, I think electronic service is the only way to get these scofflaws served.
Continue Reading Don’t know where your defendant is? You still have to *look* for them.
(TL;DR… publication is a horrible, terrible, woefully insufficient means of service, and the Supreme Court said so way back in 1950. It should only be used as a last resort, and even then, only when there’s a reasonable chance that it’ll actually notify anybody that a case is afoot.)
A story flooded my news feed last Friday… US Judge Orders a Mexican Drug Cartel to Pay $1.5 Billion to Victims’ Families. A default for a billion and a half bucks ($4.6B after it’s trebled) is almost real money in this day & age, so I got curious about the procedural posture of the case. Because I live in civ-pro, several questions popped into my head, first among them being “who got sued?” (with a bit of incredulity). Continue Reading Publication, 4(f)(3), and Mexican Cartels
The single biggest challenge in my practice is layered– like a cake or a parfait or an onion or… everybody’s favorite grumpy, Glaswegian-accented ogre. Continue Reading Managing client expectations across borders
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.
(See Part One here and Part Two here. Part Three is linked below.)
An axiom of life was posed to me one day toward the end of my 2L year:
Lawyers are the most helpless race of people on the planet.
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