The case of the day is Kangol LLC v. Hangzhou Chuanyue Silk Import & Export Co. (7th Cir. 2026). I covered the case back in October, when I submitted an amicus brief on behalf of friends-of-Letters-Blogatory Bill Dodge and Maggie Gardner. In today’s case, the Seventh Circuit has now joined the Second Circuit in holding that when the Service Convention applies, and when the state of destination has objected to service by postal channels, service by email is impermissible.¹ Huzzah! I think it is fair to say that the appellate courts, when given a chance to decide the issue on a real record rather than on an ex parte basis, and with the aid of briefs that were well-done on both sides, are coalescing around the answer that I say is obviously right but that has befuddled many lower courts. I have put it like this in the past:

1. Everyone agrees that the Convention is exclusive, which means that when it applies, you have to use one of the methods of service that it authorizes or at least permits. This is the holding of Volkswagen, and the distinction between authorized and permitted methods is found in Water Splash v. Menon.
2. There is no provision in the Convention that expressly authorizes or permits service by email. If any provision does the trick, it’s Article 10(a), which permits service by postal channels—but only when the state of destination has not objected.
3. Countries like China and India have objected. Since the only possible provision that permits service by email can’t be used, the service is improper under the Convention.
4. A court cannot use FRCP 4(f)(3) to authorize a method of service that is inconsistent with a treaty.

Or more briefly, like this:

Limited methods.
Email is not on the list.
The plaintiff’s sad tears.

The case begins with some questions of waiver and timeliness that are not of much general interest. It considers a couple of ancillary Convention questions that are of some interest. First, the court notes that there was a real issue about whether the Convention applied at all, given that the defendant’s address in China was unknown. It remanded for further proceedings on whether the plaintiff had been sufficiently diligent to make that argument stick. The court also rejected a creative but (in my view) obviously wrong argument that emailing the defendant a link to the documents was not a transmission of the documents themselves. If you haven’t transmitted the documents, then how can you really say you have effected service? After all, the plaintiff did not claim it had served the documents fictitiously or by publication.

But leaving those issues aside, it was gratifying to see a court stick the landing and get the right answer for the right reason. The issue is not free from doubt: the Florida state courts continue to get the issue wrong, and the Florida Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from a case in which I had indicated the intent to submit an amicus brief for Professor Huo Zhengxin explaining why the Florida rule offends the interests of states that have objected under Article 10. But the trend is very, very good.

1. Leaving aside the academic possibilities of Article 19, etc. ↩︎