This is penned on July 9, 2024, well in advance of the Dominican Republic’s implementation of the Hague Service Convention. It will be revised in total on October 1 when the Convention enters into force.
If the action can wait until then… wait, because for the moment, the Convention’s lack of force is at
Rich Coast. Delicious Coast. Abundant Coast. However you want to translate Costa Rica into English, it conjures images of palm trees and stunning beaches and lush interior rainforest. And parrots. Lots and lots of parrots. I have a friend who spends a month down there every winter, and who can blame him?
But there’s quite
Ordinarily, a how-to guide like this would lay out methodology for the application of the Hague Service Convention. But Panama isn’t party to the Hague Service Convention, so that idea goes out the window. This is at once a blessing and a curse.
… because you aren’t tied to a method
Congratulations. Your USM-94 has arrived and you’ve fulfilled your obligation relative to the Hague Service Convention.
Whether you’re a client who has retained us to file an Article 5 Request on your behalf with a foreign government, or you’ve used the Hague Envoy platform, or you’re one of those intrepid do-it-yourself* practitioners who has decided
Another frequently asked question we get here at Viking Advocates is how much extra time an overseas defendant gets to answer.
A very easy reply: None. Nada, zip, zero, zilch.
But opposing counsel contends that they get 90 days because of the Hague Service Convention, says my client.
Ahem, no, says me.
The Convention
(Update, November, 2025: In addition to personal injury suits, the number of anti-trust suits against Novo Nordisk has increased lately as well. Same calculus involved– there’s only one valid way to serve if the company won’t waive. But there are some quirks involved.)
Latest trend in litigation nationwide: Danish pharmaceutical manufacturer Novo Nordisk and its
[TL; DR: don’t even bother with it in most cases. Likely the only way to get effective service in Hong Kong lies in Article 10.]
In 1997, Hong Kong ceased to be an outpost of the waning British Empire and returned to Chinese control for the first time since the Opium Wars early in the
By far– and I’m talking miles here– the single most frequent question to hit my inbox: “hey, Aaron, any update yet?” Most of the time, the answer is no.
In many cases, the question comes from a lawyer who needs to calm an anxious litigant who just doesn’t understand that (1) things don’t work
[Author’s notes: (1) Although this post focuses mainly on entity defendants, we encounter the same problem with individual defendants. Individuals are simply harder to ascertain and locate, just like on this side of the Pacific. And (2) an update a year following publication of this post: not only does the research suggested here help to
