
Every once in a while, a colleague will call me with a story similar to this one:
“A client just walked into my office three days ago with what looks to be a rock-solid case. We can establish duty, breach, causation, and damages* without a whole lot of difficulty, but the defendants are in Beijing and Toronto. The statute of limitation runs next week, so we’ve GOT to get them served before then or we’re out of luck.”
Relax, I say. Continue Reading Time to file versus time to serve







You’ve served the complaint on all of your defendants, they’ve entered their appearances, and everybody is girded up for battle. Discovery commences. In one of your depositions, you learn that one of the defendants was somehow selling a knock-off of your client’s product in Europe through a British distributor, and you are convinced that somewhere in that company’s vast filing system lies the smoking gun.
Just hope the custodian of documents isn’t this guy–>





