Articles Posted in Jurisdiction

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The plaintiffs in two copyright infringement cases assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Gregory H. Woods in the Southern District of New York want to use email to serve summons on dozens of defendants located in the People’s Republic of China.

Woods was concerned about the validity of email service, which U.S. District Court Judge Joan B. Gottschall considered in Luxottica Group v. Partnerships & Unincorporated Associations identified on Schedule “A,” 391 F.Supp.3d 816 (N.D. Ill. 2019). The judge asked for help from a professor and director of Hong Yen Chang Center for Chinese Legal Studies at Columbia University Law School, for “disinterested legal advice regarding whether a foreign plaintiff may, under relevant Chinese law, properly serve via email a defendant located in the People’s Republic of China.”

A pre-internet treaty, the 1965 Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters (“treaty”) was designed to simplify and standardize the serving process abroad. Each member nation of the Hague Convention is supposed to designate a central authority to receive service of process.

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An appellate court has ruled that Cook County is an appropriate venue for a lawsuit that involved a truck crash in Ohio and a company that primarily does its business out of a southern Illinois town.

The Illinois First District Appellate Court found that plaintiff Sergiu Tabirta’s lawsuit against driver James Cummings and Gilster Mary Lee Corp. (GML) can go forward in the Circuit Court of Cook County because GML does business in Cook County. GML is a private-label food manufacturer headquartered in Chester, Ill., which is located 62 miles south of St. Louis along the Mississippi River. GML employed a Cook County resident, James Bolton, who worked out of his home as GML’s “point person” for three customers – Aldi, Central Grocery and Sears/Kmart.

Bolton’s home could be considered an “other office” in Cook County, meaning Tabirta’s lawsuit against the company could proceed in Cook County as the Illinois Appellate Court of the First District found.

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