The New York state appellate divisions are split, as are the federal circuits, on whether Article 10 of the Hague Convention on Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil and Commercial Matters (Hague Convention) permits service by mail, in the absence of an explicit objection to such service by one the signatories.
The Hague Convention is one of the primary means of affecting service on a party residing in another country. The debate about service via mail is fairly simple. Article 2 of the Hague Convention requires that each signatory to it establish a “central authority” that obtains service requests regarding foreign litigation and then serves them on the appropriate party. Articles 8 through 11 permit alternate methods of service, which a state may choose to allow, and Article 19 states that the Hague Convention should not be read to interfere with other more liberal methods of service that may exist in any particular nation.
