Welcome back!

The language you cite isn’t from the United States declarations. It’s from the United States’s answer to a 2003 questionnaire sent by the Hague Conference to states.

I don’t think the point you’re making is a bad one: the Practical Handbook criticizes the Greene decision, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4093 (N.D. Tex. 1998), which takes the view I am suggesting, precisely because if it’s right, then anyone (more or less) can be a competent person. It’s a fair point, and I get that foreign states don’t want Joe Blow signing requests for service.

But that said, if we really mean it when we say that the law of the forum determines who is competent, and if we agree that the only US law that really bears on the issue is the law about who is competent to serve process, and if we agree that for better or worse, US law is extremely liberal in this area, I don’t see any way around the conclusion that a private process server has just as good a claim to be a competent authority as does a lawyer.

(Just getting back to this after being abroad…)

The US declarations are what designate who can sign– not the FRCP. Specifically, “(t)he 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.”

FRCP is mute as to signing Hague forms, and 4(c)(2) isn’t applicable. The act of *requesting* service via a foreign authority is not synonymous with *serving*.

I don’t know about that. In federal court, any person other than a party can serve process. The reason why a lawyer, for example, is authorized to sign the request is just that he is authorized under FRCP 4(c)(2)—just like a process server. There is nothing else in US law, as far as I know, that makes a lawyer a competent person under the law of the forum.

That said, I don’t think it’s good practice for a process server to sign the form, and unless I have experience with a particular central authority and I know it will understand, I don’t think it’s good practice for a lawyer to sign. In general, I ask the clerk to do it. That way, the request gets a big official-looking seal, which can help facilitate things in countries that can’t fathom the liberality of US law in this area.

The US guidance on this says that “any court official, any attorney, or any other person or entity authorized by the rules of the court” can act as the forwarding authority.

Of course!

Ian (D. Withers)
Ian@pilimited.com
UK and Ireland