Personal Service in UK Law

Sebastian Holdings Inc. ("SHI"), the Defendant, conducted substantial foreign exchange and equities trading with Deutsche Bank ("DB"), the Claimant. This trading became loss making and when SHI failed to meet margin calls DB took proceedings to recover the debts owed to it. SHI is the creature company of Mr. Vik, its former, and until April 2015, sole director and shareholder. Accordingly he has been held to be liable to pay DB £36m.

If the only real redress is damages, how can its measure or scope be affected according to whether the contract is regarded as still subsisting or as at an end? To preserve the bare contractual relationship is an empty formality.

Granted that the purpose of service is to bring the document to the attention of the person to be served, these are all methods of service other than personal service which are not bound to put the document literally into the hands of the person to be served on any particular day. It seems to me that parties serving documents by these means are in a better position if the deemed date for service is certain than if it is open to challenge on factual grounds.

Like my noble and learned friend, Lord Bridge of Harwich, I am satisfied that Mr. Vallance's first submission must fail. Prima facie, the process server must hand the relevant document to the person upon whom it has to be served. The only concession to practicality is that, if that person will not accept the document, the process server may tell him what the document contains and leave it with him or near him (see Ord. 65, r. 2 and the notes to that rule in the Supreme Court Practice).

The first is to notify the defendant that the claimant has embarked on the formal process of litigation and to inform him of the nature of the claim. The second is to enable the defendant to participate in the process and have some say in the way in which the claim is prosecuted: until he has been served, the defendant may know that proceedings are likely to be issued, but he does not know for certain and he can do nothing to move things along.

Nevertheless, it follows in our judgment that to use rule 6.8 as a means for turning the flank of those Conventions, when it is common ground that they do not permit service by a direct and speedy method such as post, is to subvert the Conventions which govern the service rule as between claimants in England and defendants in Germany.

Insofar as assistance is gained from general statements of principle, we would prefer to rely on the last two cases, which reflect the salutary principle that proceedings must be brought to the actual notice of a defendant unless this is shown to be impracticable. The alternatives to personal service are allowed because they found a good working presumption (rebuttable, but still a good working presumption) that they will bring the proceedings to the notice of the defendant.