Civil Procedure Rules Update 47 - October 2008

The revised part 6 regime for service of documents

In the conjoined appeals of Collier v Williams; Marshall

& Rankine v Maggs; Leeson v Marsden; Glass v Surrendran

[2006] EWCA Civ 20, the Court of Appeal considered four cases that

gave rise to a number of issues relating to the service of the

claim form. In his judgment, Dyson LJ noted that it had become

clear that Part 6 (the rules relating to service) and Rule 7.6 (the

rule relating to the extending of time for service of the claim

form) have not fulfilled the Woolf Reform aims of being simple and

straightforward and avoiding frequent satellite litigation.

Therefore, the Civil Procedure Rule Committee conducted a review of

the rules relating to service and, following consultation in 2007,

the CPR have been revised to create a simpler regime for service of

documents. Many of the rules do remain the same, but there are a

number of important differences.

1 "Service" will continue to have a technical meaning.

Receipt or not of a document does not dictate whether a person has

or has not been served. This is to be determined by application of

the rules.

2 The new Part 6 is divided into five sections:

Scope of the part and interpretation;

Service of the claim form in the jurisdiction;

Service of documents other than the claim form in the United

Kingdom;

Service of the claim form and other documents out of the

jurisdiction;

Service of documents from foreign courts or tribunals.

3 Sections IV and V essentially simplify and reformat the old

sections III and IV respectively. The most important change is the

separation into two separate regimes of the rules for service

within the jurisdiction of claim forms (Section II) and the rules

for service of other documents in proceedings (Section III). As a

result, there is a degree of duplication with a number of

provisions in Section II being repeated, with necessary

modifications (or incorporated by reference), in Section III.

4 There are no transitional provisions

? the new Part 6 applies to all claim forms and documents

served on and after 1 October 2008.

5 A company can be served with a document by any method

permitted under Part 6 or by any of the methods set out in the

Companies Act 1985 or the Companies Act 2006.

6 A new development is that a limited liability partnership can

be served with a document by any method permitted under Part 6 or

by any of the methods set out in s725 of the Companies Act

1985.

7 As before, ordinarily service will be by the court, with

exceptions (as per Rules 6.4 and 6.21). Now, where the court has

served the claim form by post and it has been returned to the

court, or the court bailiff is to serve the defendant but has been

unable to do so, and the court has sent a notification of such, it

will not try to serve the claim form again (Rule 6.4(4)). Therefore

be aware that the court will now make only one attempt to serve the

claim form.

Service of the claim form within time and deemed service

8 Previously a claim form had to be served

within four months after the date on which it was issued by the

court, and the deemed day of that service varied according to the

method of service adopted by the serving party. If the application

of the rules meant that a claim form was deemed served after the

four month period, then service was out of time, even if the claim

form had in fact been received within the four month period.

9 Now...