Search results for: how to serve process in

Kevlar

That’s Kevlar® on that kid’s head.  Technically, it’s called “a kevlar” (like your grandpa’s WW2 helmet was called “a steel”), but it’s made of Kevlar® (capital “K”) a little miracle fiber dreamed up by the gang at DuPont Chemical.  It has saved thousands of lives in its five decades on the planet.  Kevlar® is the stuff that makes helmets and bulletproof vests, well, bulletproof.  But any hard-charging operator will tell you that if you don’t wear it correctly, it’s not as bulletproof as you need it to be.

I wrote a few months ago that defense counsel should always question the validity of Hague service that has (ostensibly) been effected on their foreign client.  A request submitted to a foreign authority pursuant to Article 5 must be valid in the first place.  And many times, they’re not valid—even if the Central Authority receiving them doesn’t know it or doesn’t care (most of them never inquire).

Usually, a Hague Certificate is the functional equivalent of Kevlar®.  But if you don’t wear it correctly, it’s not as bulletproof as you need it to be.  A Hague Certificate predicated on an invalid Hague Request is itself tainted.   (Something about a “poisonous tree” tickles my memory from law school.  Yes, I know—that was the exclusionary rule.  This is different.  But it’s the same relative idea.)

How do I know this?  Well, a couple of years ago, I got a letter from the Ministry of Justice in Budapest, asking why I thought I was qualified to sign one of these things.  Those pesky Hungarians, what with their bowls of paprika-laden goodness and their stunning trios of starlets, demanded to know the source of my authority.

Why, the United States’ declarations to Article 3 of the Hague Service Convention, I responded by email:

The persons and entities within the United States competent to forward service requests pursuant to Article 3 include any court official, any attorney, or any other person or entity authorized by the rules of the court.

(Emphasis mine.)  Within 24 hours of my answer, I received a very collegial email from a fellow in the Ministry’s Department of Private International Law …  Thank you, kind sir.  We will proceed with your request forthwith.

But their query got me thinking…  do they actually get invalid requests, signed by people who aren’t authorized?

As it turns out, yes.  They do.  Regularly.

(Joe Bob is not a lawyer.)

Not long after my exchange with the Hungarians, a lawyer in Chicago emailed me to ask if the service that he’d had effected on a foreign defendant was valid.  I scratched my head, wondering why he was unsure, but when he sent me the paperwork, it dawned on me.  He had hired a process server who filled out a standard USM-94 and signed the request, citing FRCP 4(c)(2) as the basis for his authority.  Horns and alarm bells started going off in my head.

You see, 4(c)(2) has nothing to do with Hague Requests whatsoever.  It merely says that any adult non-party can serve process in a federal case.  But the act of signing a Hague Request and the act of serving process are not the same thing.  A foreign official actually serves process in response to a Hague Service Convention Request.  The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure don’t govern who actually serves process in foreign lands (nor do state rules, for that matter)—they require deference to the laws of those foreign lands.

I’m adamant that lawyers should outsource the procedures that reduce the efficiency of their practice, and serving abroad is just such a procedure.  But the outsourcing must be done advisedly, and that means ensuring that the Hague Request is signed by a licensed attorney or someone appointed by the court for just such a purpose.

Most professional process servers will refer out this kind of work.  But if your process server assures you that it’s not a problem for a non-lawyer to sign a USM-94, you’ll want to call your malpractice carrier before you engage the process server.   It’s a good idea to let them know in advance that you’re taking legal advice from a non-lawyer.

[Originally published at vikinglaw.us]

Photo credit:  United States Marine Corps, photo ID 120601-M-BM244-004, via Wikimedia Commons.  I’m pretty sure this kid is safer than any other human being on the planet… the Marines have his back.

This one is from DuPont’s own website, showing Kevlar® in its stock form.  Neat stuff…DuPont KevlarAS 450X

 

 

Letterbox in Cardiff (the capital of Wales).  Photo by the author, 2018.

[Update: The Water Splash decision alleviated most of the confusion in May, 2017.  The circuit split was resolved– decisively and correctly, in my view, but mail service still has to be valid under lex fori to be valid under Article 10(a) of the Hague Service Convention.  If mail is not permitted by state court rules, the Convention doesn’t magically make it so.]

Here’s an easy question:  can you serve by mail in (pick a country)?  I’ve fielded this one a hundred times.  The attorney asking has usually already decided that’s what he’s going to do and is just making sure.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it seems.  With apologies to all of those who suffered through the crucible of law school and must now live its clichés…

depends

Generally speaking, yes, you can serve by mail in much of the world, but there are exceptions, both here and abroad.  And that doesn’t mean you should serve by mail.  It’s a bad idea, for more reasons than I have space here to discuss.

Article 10(a) of the Hague Service Convention seems pretty clear.  Sending a summons & complaint by mail (and by reasonable extension, FedEx) is acceptable under the

Convention, provided the country you’re sending to doesn’t object.  That means a clear “no” in:  Germany, China, India, Mexico, Switzerland, Russia, Korea…

The answer in Japan is “probably not” (long story).

Where the destination state doesn’t object (think England, France, Canada, and others), it’s still not a great idea.  You may be on a solid legal footing, but the factual ice your other foot rests on is awfully thin.  Put another way,  good luck proving it, pal.

But the destination country isn’t the only critical element of the analysis.  You must first determine whether mail service is valid in the forum hearing the case.

Local rules don’t allow it?  Sorry, 10(a) is not going to fly, regardless of the destination country’s views.

Federal rules do allow it, but be wary.  Overseas mail service originates with the Clerk of Court, rather than the attorney’s office.

Moreover, two circuits and numerous federal districts have held that a drafting error in Article 10(a) is fatal to its validity.  The 5th and 8th Circuits keyed on the drafters’ use of the word “send” rather than “serve”.  But rejoice, 2nd and 9th!  Your appeals courts think Five and Eight goofed. **

I happen to agree with Two and Nine, but I honestly think Five and Eight will overturn themselves when the right case comes along.  (Hint:  if you have a test case in either Circuit, let me take a crack at it.)

Truly, the legal validity of Hague mail service doesn’t matter.  It’s usually a waste of energy to try it in the first place because you often can’t demonstrate conclusively that the right person at the defendant’s home (or defendant entity’s office) actually received the documents.

Far better to ensure that service is effected in a manner that leaves no question of fact.*  Article 5 is awfully handy for that, as is Article 10(b)/10(c) where available.

 

*A note about mail service’s use by foreign Central Authorities under Article 5: if the foreign authority says it’s valid, it’s valid.  Period.  The U.S. court can’t dissect the foreign government’s reasoning on the matter, and should defer.  Earlier post on serving U.S. servicemembers abroad touch on that issue  here and here.  Bottom line: a foreign authority’s use of mail validates it under Article 5.  As such, Article 10(a) analysis is inapplicable, and the Supremacy Clause makes the treaty override local rules.

** Update… the test case happened.  See my post on Water Splash.

Image credit:  Chris Downer, via Wikimedia Commons.

[Originally published at vikinglaw.us]

Immigration attorneys seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) status for their clients must seek an order of guardianship in state court before an Immigration Court will confer SIJ classification.   In order to establish that guardianship, they (or co-counsel who practices family law) must put the child’s biological parent(s) on notice of the proceedings—and that implicates a host of procedural barriers.

In many states, parental rights are constitutional in nature—the best interests of the child take a back seat— and that doctrine isn’t going away.  Even where the best interests of the child are paramount, notice must still be served in order to vindicate an absent parent’s constitutional rights.

The constitutional standard applicable to the manner of service of process comes from Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306, 314 (1950): notice by a “means reasonably calculated… to apprise” the defendant (respondent) of the action and to give him/her an opportunity to oppose it.

Where that defendant is outside the United States, the law of the foreign jurisdiction must also be respected.  In many countries, even in Latin America, that may implicate the Hague Service Convention—which is mandatory doctrine under Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesellschaft v. Schlunk, 486 U.S. 694, 699 (1988).

Application of the treaty complicates matters in serving guardianship notices, but even where it is not applicable, service may be impossible.  That does not, however, allow a court to simply deem a respondent served.  It also does not mean that mail or a fax or email or Facebook Messenger are appropriate.

Mexico is signatory to the HSC, and it has declared its opposition to all of the alternative methods of service listed in Article 10.  This leaves but one legally appropriate method of service: a formal request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Mexico City.  This process takes several months—in many cases up to a year (no, that is not a typo).

In other Latin American countries, most notably Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, service is all but impossible without extraordinary cost and risk.  But, again, that does not relieve counsel of the duty to take reasonable steps to serve.

And therein lies the key idea: reasonable steps.

Once we have accomplished a few steps, alternatives can be suggested to the court hearing the guardianship request:

  • A diligent attempt to ascertain the respondent’s location. If he’s in a village in the mountains with no address, we simply cannot reach him by traditional means.
  • If you have an address, try to serve. This is especially true in Mexico, where service is frequently effected, but usually after a lengthy wait.
  • If no address is available, there are other options, but every case is—like every jurisdiction—different.

In all cases, honest attempts at service must be initiated, lest the entire quest for SIJ status unravel.  Above all else… do it the right way.

 

[In a later post… we will discuss the Hague Adoption Convention, the State Department’s erroneous interpretation of it, and the way in which SIJ status overcomes the error.]

BigMac

This is the Secret (okay, technically “Special”) Sauce recipe for the vaunted Big Mac.  Really, the formula is not so secret, but replicating the sauce is not for the faint of heart.  And as much as Mom tried to copy it at home to save a few cents, it just couldn’t compare to the Golden Arches.

Yes, counsel, you really can handle service of process abroad by yourself.  All it takes is a few hours of research to pinpoint the applicable rules for serving wherever your defendant is located.  You can replicate it, but call in help instead, because it will save you quite a bit of headache, it will save your client quite a bit of money, and it could just save your case from dismissal due to preventable error.

The recipe for Hague Secret Sauce:

  • Step One:  Determine whether the foreign country is a member of the Hague Service Convention; you can find that out here.  If it is a Hague country, you have no choice but to adhere to the treaty’s strictures.
  • Step Two:  Read the Hague Service Convention itself.  Go on.
  • Step Three:  Look at the foreign country’s declarations regarding Article 10.  If they object, you have no choice but to avail yourself of Article 5, which is available everywhere, except in Russia.
  • Step Four:  If they don’t object, then you have to determine what constitutes a competent person under the foreign country’s law.  Its declarations will point you in the right direction—contact that competent person to arrange for service.
  • Step Five:  If you select mail service under Article 10(a), be sure that Hague mail service is acceptable in your jurisdiction.  [Be wary of FRCP 4(f)(2)(C)(ii), too.]
  • Step Six:  If you determine that Article 10 channels are unavailable, then determine the appropriate Central Authority to receive your request under Article 5.  (Germany and Switzerland are fun to discern.)
  • Step Seven:  Determine whether translation of the documents is necessary by consulting the foreign country’s declarations.  If it is not a former British colony, you will most likely have to translate.  And don’t forget the defendant’s right to due process—if they don’t speak English, you’ll have to translate anyway, even if they’re in Toronto or London.
  • Step Eight:  Have the documents translated by a trustworthy service.  [For the love of Adlai Stevenson, don’t use Google Translate, and don’t have your paralegal do it just because she spent a summer in Paris in college.  She is probably not qualified, and even if she is, her time is better spent on paralegal work anyway.]
  • Step Nine:  Fill out Form USM-94, either on your own or with a bit of help from the Hague Envoy platform, then compile the documents to be served (with their translations, as applicable) and send the request to the appropriate Central Authority.
  • Step Ten:  Wait.  In some cases, wait several months—or even a year—for a response from the foreign authority.  FRCP 4(m) gives you safe harbor from dismissal for time, as long as you aren’t dilatory.

To be sure, this series of steps assumes a perfect world, and it does not account for the particularities of each foreign jurisdiction contacted.

  • Hong Kong?  Part of China.  But it still functions under the old British system.  Then again, don’t put Hong Kong on an equal linguistic footing with the PRC.  Bad things happen if you name the jurisdiction carelessly.
  • Israel?  Allows you to hire an agent to serve, but only if that agent is specially appointed by the Jerusalem Directorate of Courts.
  • Canada?  Sure, you can find a process server in the Yellow Pages (the what?).  Except in Quebec, which is not a common law jurisdiction.
  • India?  Over 1.25 billion people.  And only one of them works in the Hague Central Authority.  Good luck.
  • Austria?  Not a Hague member.  And they’re sticklers for doing it their way.  (Seriously… don’t even think about tackling this one yourself.)    Update, 2020: yeah, they’re a Hague jurisdiction now, but they’re still sticklers!
  • Taiwan?  Not a Hague member either.  Not technically a state, in the eyes of the world.
  • Mexico?  Just… wow, the headaches that lie ahead.

That’s just to name a few.  This can be a labyrinth.

[Photo:  that is a Big Mac, the most glorious fast food item in history.  We, as a firm, are huge fans of the Big Mac, and encourage its purchase.  We hope that our endorsement will prevent a C&D letter from McDonald’s Corp. demanding that we take down the photo.  Although we would comply,  two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese…]

This post was originally published on Viking Advocates’ firm site.  It’s been modified slightly to remove the sales-pitchy stuff.

Update, November 30, 2016. Michael Delligatti, the man who brought you the Big Mac, has died. He was 98.

Serving U.S. Servicemembers Abroad, Seconda Parte (Part Two)— real world.

Sigonella Naval Hospital, U.S. Navy photo.

A war story, of sorts—told with the permission of my client, a highly regarded personal injury lawyer.  He is one of those guys all the newbie lawyers regard with awe (as do I) because he’s got mad skills in a courtroom.  He found himself in a bit of a quandary last year, and sought help from someone who knows.

He has a medical malpractice suit currently pending, in which a hospital and several doctors are named as defendants.  In the intervening time since the incidents giving rise to the suit, one of the physician defendants joined the United States Navy, and was stationed at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily.

The Mediterranean coast of Sicily, off Catania. DoD photo.

  [Not a rough assignment.  Anyplace called the “Jewel of the Med” is a pretty good billet. —> ]

The client called me last summer to inquire about serving the Navy doctor.   An awfully tough goal, I told him, explaining the gist of my recent post “Serving U.S. Servicemembers Abroad”.

In a nutshell, if the G.I. lives on a military installation, you’re probably going to have to wait until they return stateside.  A number of rules collide to create a real Catch-22 in serving process… our military authorities either can’t or won’t serve process, and the servicemember’s quarters are off-limits to local authorities.  [Hat tip to Yossarian.]

As luck would have it, though, my client had what he thought was a regular address in Catania, the city between the naval base and beautiful, volcanic Mount Etna.  We hired an Italian investigator who was able to confirm that the address was indeed that of the defendant.  The Navy doc had done what I would do in such a situation… she rented an apartment “on the economy”, as the grown-ups used to refer to off-post housing when I was a brat overseas.

Living in civilian housing put her squarely under the jurisdiction of the local prosecutor, who had the responsibility of serving process pursuant to our request under the Hague Service Convention.  Within a few weeks, the Italians sent word that the defendant had been served because the prosecutor had mailed the documents to her apartment.  They returned proof of service for submission to the venue court, going so far as to cite the various sections of the Italian Civil Code that made it effective.  Defense counsel argued that the doctor had never actually received the summons, so the case against her ought to be dismissed for want of proper service.  Counsel asserted that the Hague Service Convention requires actual delivery to the defendant (it doesn’t), that Italian law requires actual delivery to the defendant (it doesn’t), and that the appropriate authority for the venue court to look to was the European Judicial Network (um… I had to look that one up).

The Convention requires no such thing.  It requires only that the Central Authority of the destination state attest to the effectiveness of service according to its own laws, if indeed that service can be completed.  U.S. caselaw, moreover, cautions courts against analyzing matters of a foreign country’s law when the Central Authority certifies that a method of service is valid.  In short, leave interpretation of foreign countries’ laws to the foreign countries themselves.  [Imagine the howls of protest if an Italian court were to overturn the U.S. Central Authority’s certification of compliance with American law!]

Not only does Italian law require no such thing, but according to the documentation provided by Italian authorities, service by mail is specifically authorized.  Indeed, many civil law countries actually prefer service by mail or mere deposit in a defendant’s mailbox.  Things truly operate differently abroad.  The point is, Italy doesn’t require that the summons reach the defendant’s hands, as counsel argued to the court.

Most puzzling, though, was the contention that the European Judicial Network was a valid interpreter of Italian law, superior even to an Italian court.  The closest U.S. analog would be the Judicial Conference of the United States—but even that analogy falls short because the JCUS has actual statutory authority to set certain policy for the federal judiciary.  The EJN, conversely, is a flexible, informal, unofficial group of “contact points” established to facilitate judicial cooperation among members of the European Union.  Hardly an authoritative body.  [The real analogy here would arise if the JCUS were cited as an authority on Florida law, or New York law, or Colorado law.  Simply put, it lacks such power.  And so does the EJN as to Italian law.]

Cutting to the chase, the venue court agreed with us and denied the motion to dismiss.  Very tersely.

The takeaway: my client did it right.  He’s a master in front of a jury, and he’s been highly successful at vindicating the rights of tort victims.  The guy knows what he’s doing.  But he still called in some help when he saw the challenge in front of him.  Rather than spending the time and resources to serve an overseas defendant himself (and thereby save a few bucks on paper), he sought outside help—more cost-effective, accurate, expeditious help from someone who knows the intricacies of service abroad.

 

[Originally published at vikinglaw.us]

A little over a year ago, Ted Folkman posted in his fantastic column, Letters Blogatory, about a mistaken ruling in Kim v. Lakeside Adult Family Home (Wash. App. 2015).  When I read the opinion, I concluded that Ted’s description of a “mistake” was far too diplomatic.  The court’s opinion was so wildly wrong that it conflicted violently with the Hague Service Convention.  A bit hyperbolic perhaps, but I really did want to pull my hair out.

Last spring, I took it upon myself to submit an Amicus Brief (in Washington, an Amicus Memorandum) to the state Supreme Court, arguing that the opinion below allowed Washington litigants to contravene the letter, spirit, and underlying purpose of the Convention.   The Appeals Court had read into the Convention an idea that simply wasn’t there—namely, that under Article 19, a U.S. plaintiff could avail himself of a method of service in a foreign country despite that country’s objections to Article 10’s alternative methods, so long as the method was available to litigants in that country’s courts.

In Kim, the plaintiffs hired a private agent to personally serve a Norwegian defendant at her home.  Norway objects to Article 10, but the plaintiffs argued (without substantive citation to authority, as far as I can tell) that Norwegian law permits personal service by private agent.  This runs contrary to the usual practice in civil law jurisdictions, where service of process is a sovereign function carried out almost exclusively by judicial officers.  Setting that issue aside, however, even if private service is available in Norwegian cases, the plaintiff failed to show how such a method should apply to process sent from outside Norway.  Therein lay my objection to the Washington App. Ct. ruling—it was distressingly bad law because it set aside Norway’s Article 10 objections altogether and created a wholly inappropriate doctrine.

If the Supreme Court failed to correct the disastrous holding that the Appeals Court had issued, the only recourse would be to the U.S. Supreme—and the odds of getting there are always slim (and the Norwegian defendant was a nurse… not sufficiently wealthy to carry the issue all the way to the Nine Eight Wise Souls in D.C.).  I also feared that Wash. might decline to hear the matter because the plaintiffs cured their defect by serving the nurse properly via Norway’s Central Authority, rendering the Hague question moot.

Last week, reason prevailed (the opinion is linked from Ted’s follow-up column here).  The Washington Supreme overturned the lower ruling, holding that “ensuring proper service” is an “issue of continuing and substantial public interest,” so mootness wasn’t a problem.  Absent such a holding, the bad law would have remained.  More importantly, the Court also held that “the Hague Convention does not convert a country’s domestic laws on service of process into laws governing service of process of documents coming from abroad.”

Now, I wish they’d stop calling it simply “the Hague Convention”, and I’ve railed about that issue (see here and here).  Regardless, the Court wisely rejected the plaintiffs’ Article 19 argument and fixed a terrible horrible no good very bad mistake.

 

[Disclaimer:  I’m a plaintiffs’ guy at heart.  But my motivation on this one is to make sure that bad law gets torn down, and this one was really bad.  If you’re going to do it, do it right…]

Photo by Harvey Barrison:  The Temple of Justice, home to Washington’s State Supreme Court, via Wikimedia Commons.

Five

(… or, if you will, “How to not have to hire Viking Advocates when the contract sours.”)

Let’s get the disclaimers out of the way.  One, this advice is legal in nature, but it is not offered to a specific person.  It is general information meant to provide perspective, to highlight the vulnerabilities in a contract.

Two, it is not an exhaustive list, so if this is all you contemplate in a contract, you are headed for disaster.

Three, if you are a business owner who seeks to enter into a contract with a foreign party, you must (and I cannot stress this enough) HIRE A LAWYER.  This is not just a plea to protect my guild monopoly.  Yes, you’re as smart as any of us.  Yes, you have a wonderful product/service/company/etc. and you do wonderful things.  But you cannot foresee what your lawyer can.  Global commerce is no place for the faint of heart, and it is no place for self-representation.

These are vital issues your lawyer must contemplate before you sign a contract.  If s/he hasn’t thought of them, mention them.  If they tell you these issues aren’t important, run away as fast as you can, because your lawyer is dangerously ignorant of transnational litigation procedures (to be sure, just because your lawyer hasn’t mentioned them does not mean s/he hasn’t factored them into the equation).  These are not absolutes, but are factors that should unquestionably be mentioned.  [UPDATE:  Each of these headings is linked to a post that elaborates on the idea…]

  1. Designate an agent for service in the United States. All U.S. entities must designate an agent for service when they incorporate, organize, or register with their respective Secretary of State.  Foreign (that is, non-U.S.) entities often bear no such responsibility.  If a lawsuit becomes necessary, you probably won’t be able to just hire a process server in the foreign country. Your lawyer will need someone like me to handle it for you or, worse, will spend hours just researching how it’s done (and then bill you for that time).  With a U.S. agent, regular U.S. practice is perfectly fine.  (And to go one better, have the contract stipulate that the agent can be served by email!)
  1. Include a choice of venue. Even if that venue is overseas (and in many cases, it’s actually smarter to choose a foreign venue than a U.S. venue), agreeing on the appropriate place for a suit prevents a number of headaches—and can even prevent a dispute from arising in the first place.  Globally, this is referred to as a “choice of court clause” but has similar binding effect in most industrialized countries.
  1. Choose a governing law. Amazingly, the choice of what rules govern a dispute is left out of many contracts completely, with each party simply assuming that their own laws will apply.  That assumption is incredibly dangerous.  To be sure, the negotiated choice of law may not ultimately be the one you hope for, but as the old adage goes… forewarned is forearmed.
  1. Determine the operative language. Especially if the other party puts two versions of a proposed contract in front of you, make sure you select the operative language early on—and then revise that draft accordingly.  An entire civilization once gave over its territory because an ostensibly bilingual contract wasn’t really bilingual.
  1. Guard against having to enforce abroad by making the other party secure a guarantee of judgment debt from an American bank or other guarantor. Yes, it’s a pain in the neck.  Yes, it can drive up the cost of contracting and thus drive up the cost of the entire relationship.  But a judgment following a lawsuit is utterly worthless if it can’t be enforced.  If the foreign party’s assets are all in a country that won’t recognize and enforce a U.S. judgment, litigating the matter is a massive waste of time.
  1. Bonus Tip: add an arbitration clause. It serves the same purpose as a choice of court clause, and often designates specific rules and the governing law.  Thanks to the New York Arbitration Convention, arbitral awards are far easier to enforce abroad than litigated judgments and, despite their political unpopularity, provide significant cost savings in dispute resolution.

Again, your lawyer may have already pondered these issues, but they are still worth discussing.  Viking Advocates assists attorneys in the diligent drafting of global contracts, but the bulk of what we do results from contracts that are silent on these issues– especially #1.  Hiring us now for a consultation now means not having to hire us later to help wage a long and protracted litigation war.

 

Acknowledgment:  Particular thanks to Dan Harris of Harris Bricken in Seattle, who pens an outstanding blog on the legal ramifications of doing business in China.  Dan’s thoughts on litigating against Chinese opponents are extrapolated more generally here.

[Originally published at vikinglaw.us]

Your client is a G.I.— a grunt, a leatherneck, a swabbie, or a flyboy.  While he was stationed overseas, he met a girl who he thought was the love of his life.  After a whirlwind romance, they got married, and she followed him stateside.

Eventually, things went south.  For whatever reason, marriages end every day, but for military families they are particularly heart-wrenching, especially when the non-military spouse is from another country.

When that foreign spouse leaves the U.S., the divorce process is decidedly more difficult because service of process isn’t quite as simple as hiring a server to hand her the documents.  Doctrines of international and foreign law must be observed.  Those doctrines vary wildly from country to country, so what is appropriate in England or Belgium might be expressly prohibited in Germany or Japan.

Family lawyers representing military clients must be meticulous about ensuring that service is effected properly—even if the court is unaware of the proper procedure—and just reading the applicable treaty or status or forces agreement is not enough.  The nightmare scenario if the procedure is not carried out correctly: the foreign spouse has a change of heart, returns to find her husband married again… and files an action to nullify his later marriage.  Far-fetched, of course, but possible.

(Where a spouse seeks to serve a U.S. servicemember stationed or deployed abroad, it gets even more complicated.  We elaborate here.)

 

Rosetta

U.S. court, U.S. plaintiff, U.S. defendant… everything about the case is American but one:  the defendant lives in Kaiserslautern.  Or Basel, or Xi’an, or Montreal—pick an overseas city.

When you serve a defendant in another country, you must observe the laws of that country, particularly where the Hague Service Convention applies.  Here’s why:

If the document is to be served under (Article 5), the Central Authority may require the document to be written in, or translated into, the official language or one of the official languages of the State addressed.”

— The Hague Service Convention, Article 5(3)

Note the key clause:  “The Central Authority may require…”.

They almost always do.  With the exception of Israel, Italy, and the Netherlands, every Hague member that wasn’t once part of the British Commonwealth (and one that still is) will mandate a translation from English into its own language.  Switzerland and Belgium are even more picky, requiring translation into a particular tongue based on which city the defendant finds himself in.

Even if the Central Authority does not require it, like in Italy or the Netherlands, the court officials and bureaucrats who handle the request down the line may have an affirmative duty to reject the request for lack of translation.

Best practice: eat the cost and do it anyway, because you will save your client a whole bunch of headache—not to mention money—as the case progresses.

The same advice applies to service under Article 10.  Although nothing in the Convention requires a translation for alternative methods, if the defendant is in a jurisdiction that wasn’t once a British colony, there is probably no such thing as a process server.  Service must be effected by a judicial official, so expect some sort of hiccup to set off a chain of events culminating in a dismissal.

And even worse, don’t play around and use Google Translate just to save a few bucks.  I love the thing—the camera function in the Android App is really handy for translating gelato flavors in Rome.  But it is utterly horrible for legal documents.  Do it the right way, and hire someone with the expertise necessary to do it professionally.   [The same can be said for undertaking Hague Service requests on a Do-It-Yourself basis.  Just like that home improvement project you started a year ago—but had to call a plumber to finish—it will cost you and your client more in the long run.  Outsource it!]

[Originally published at vikinglaw.us]

A particular quirk arises in serving a defendant if he or she is a U.S. servicemember stationed abroad.  For the most part, I explain to clients that such an objective is a tough one, so they might have to simply wait until the defendant returns to the United States.   [This is not, as one might assume, due to the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (formerly the Soldiers & Sailors Civil Relief Act, 50 U.S.C. §§ 3901-4043).  That statute stays proceedings, tolls statutes of limitation, and provides a host of other protections to uniformed defendants, but it does not address service of process.]

Defendants must, of course, be served according to the rules of the forum court.  But when a servicemember is stationed in another country, they can only be served within the strictures of applicable international agreements.   The Hague Service Convention is chief among the governing treaties, but no less important are individual Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs), which govern access to U.S. installations by civilians and local authorities.

Herein lies the quandary, with several contradictory components.  Unless the defendant has a discernible civilian address (that is, not located on a U.S. installation), standard methods of service will be unavailable.

  • Hague service is not available without an address.  If a defendant lives in a barracks or other on-post* housing, then they simply don’t have an address.  Of course, “1234 Eisenhower Drive” or simply “Building 2375” may be valid for telling friends where to gather for a social engagement, but the addressing system is most likely unknown to local authorities (both civil authorities and the post office).  It has no legal effect, and can change by the simple act of a clerk.
  • Even if the defendant does have a discernible on-post address, mail is generally not delivered to such an address, and local judicial authorities would most likely be denied access to the post under the governing SOFA.  That said, I have had soldiers served where local officials coordinate with the post Provost Marshal to have the defendant meet the serving officer at the gate.  (Process servers, where they exist, are afforded very little accommodation by post security.)
  • Forget about serving them at the office, especially if “the office” is an artillery range.  Even if a local judicial officer does gain access, those officers generally avoid serving anybody at work.
  • The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the use of Army and Air Force chains of command for civil purposes, and various Naval regulations likewise create insurmountable roadblocks.  Urban myth advises that a plaintiff simply needs to ask a JAG (Judge Advocate General) office to effect service but this simply isn’t accurate.

So what is a plaintiff to do?  Several options are available, although odds of success are lower than with service on a non-military defendant.

  1. Wait.  Simply hold onto the summons until the defendant returns from his tour of duty overseas, and serve him upon his arrival stateside.  Of course, the court must be made aware of the hurdles to proper notice, so an order excusing non-service may be issued to protect the plaintiff from dismissal.
  2. Request leave to serve via U.S. mail at his known APO or FPO (Army/Air Post Office or Fleet Post Office) address.**  APO/FPO addresses are not tied to geography like a street address is.  If a unit stationed in Germany is temporarily transferred to Kuwait, a soldier’s address may not change–or if it does, the APO staff in Germany will automatically forward his mail to the new address as a matter of course.  In short, the soldier will get his mail.
  3. Request leave to serve by electronic mail.**  All U.S. personnel are issued email addresses for official use, and they are generally permitted to use those addresses for personal communication while stationed abroad.  Moreover, given the ubiquity of free email servers, it is nonsensical for an active duty defendant to argue that he/she does not have a personal email account.  And like APO/FPO addresses, email addresses are tied to an individual, rather than to a physical location, so treaty considerations are less daunting.  (E-mail’s acceptance as a means of effective service is growing, slowly but surely.)
  4. If the defendant happens to live in civilian housing (“on the economy”) and his address can be ascertained, serve via traditional channels.  This may come in different forms, so significant brainstorming is necessary.

Serving a G.I. isn’t as easy as serving other defendants, but it may still be possible with creative thinking.

* The author is an Army brat.  An Army installation is referred to as a post, and it is painful to call it anything else.  Not a fort, not a base, and certainly not a campus.  With all respect to the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, you’ll have to substitute your own terminology on this one.  Post, base, installation… you get the idea.

** Use of APO/FPO mail or of U.S. military e-mail servers may run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act.  The issue has not been addressed in case law as of this writing.