Most litigators have heard of the Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters, also known as the Hague Convention or the Evidence Convention (codified as 28 U.S.C. Section 1781), but the procedures for utilizing it is less well known. In In re Cote D’Azur Estate, C.A. No. 2017-0290-JTL (Del. Ch. Nov. 18, 2022), Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster considered a motion for the issuance of a letter of request under the Hague Convention. In granting the motion, the Vice Chancellor addressed the requirements for issuing letters of request.

Plaintiff Lilly Lea Perry sought to obtain by a letter of request electronic data that Swiss investigators had seized from the law offices of defendant Dieter Neupert. Neupert was the architect of the estate plan for Perry’s husband. When he died, Neupert advised Perry that her husband had been the sole member of Cote D’Azur Estate LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, which owned a villa in the south of France. Neupert told Perry that her husband’s interest in the LLC had passed to his estate and that she was his sole heir. Subsequently, a dispute over the estate arose between Perry and the couple’s daughters, and Neupert reversed his position, saying that Perry’s husband had assigned his interest in the LLC to a different entity before his death. Neupert then arranged to convert the LLC to a corporation and to authorize the issuance of its stock to that other entity.