Back in July 2015, I covered Menon v. Water Splash, Inc., 472 S.W.3d 28 (Tex. Ct. App. 2015), a case in which the Texas Court of Appeals held, erroneously and over a strong dissent, that Article 10(a) of the Hague Service Convention does not permit service by mail, because it refers to “sending” rather than “serving” documents. In October 2015, the court denied a petition for rehearing en banc, and in May 2016 the Texas Supreme Court denied review. Water Splash, the plaintiff below, then filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court. Such petitions, as a general matter, have a very low chance of success, and in many cases, as here, the respondent waives the right to respond. But in September, the Court requested a response, which generally is an indication that there may be some interest on the Court in the issue the petition presents. So it is possible that at long last we will have some closure one way or the other to the saga of Article 10(a) in the US courts. Stay tuned!

Interested readers can find an archive of posts dealing with service by mail here.