The case of the day is Firstbank Puerto Rico v. Atlantic Finance Business Corp. (D.P.R. 2014). Firstbank sued Atlantic Finance and Leovigildo Perez–Minaya for breach of contract. The defendants were served with process in the Dominican Republic, which is not a party to the Hague Service Convention or the Inter-American Convention.

There was no dispute that the method of service complied with the law of the Dominican Republic and thus with FRCP 4(f)(2)(A). Rather, the claim, which Atlantic Finance and Perez-Minaya raised on a motion to dismiss for insufficient for service of process, was that the service was untimely under the local law, which, according to the defendants, requires that service be effected “on the eighth day.” But the judge disagreed with this interpretation of the law of the Dominican Republic, holding instead that the reference to the eighth day was a reference to the time for the defendant to enter an appearance, not to service of process at all.

All of this just goes to illustrate the usefulness of the central authority mechanism in cases where service can be made under one of the two service conventions (unfortunately, that wasn’t the case here). It’s hard to figure out the law of many foreign countries, and one of the benefits of the central authority mechanism is to relieve the plaintiff of the burden of figuring out what foreign law requires. The central authority itself is responsible for serving the documents in accordance with its own local law; and US courts generally accord certificates of service returned by the central authority at least prima facie effect, thus at a minimum shifting the burden to the defendant to show that service was not properly effected.