When a defendant is located outside the United States, may she be served by email? This column looks at various issues that must be considered in order to answer that question.
The touchstone for service of process abroad is the Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters (the Hague Convention).1 The Convention itself, Article 1, provides that it “shall apply in all cases, in civil or commercial matters, where there is occasion to transmit a judicial or extrajudicial document for service abroad.” Consistent therewith, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Volkswagenwek Aktiengesellschaft v. Schlunkheld that “[b]y virtue of the Supremacy Clause, … the [Hague] Convention pre-empts inconsistent methods of service prescribed by state law in all cases to which it applies.”2 State courts, such as those in New York, have echoed the supremacy notion, holding:
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