As service is an essential part of any legal proceeding (because it ensures that the defendant knows that a court process has been started against them) but be difficult and time-consuming in international cases. The Hague Convention on Service aims to simplify the process by establishing a uniform framework to serve judicial documents in foreign countries.
The Convention applies where a judicial document is to be served by someone in one member state upon someone in another member state. You need to know the address of the person to be served, and the document to be served relates to a civil or commercial matter.
It operates via authorities in each country, not individuals. A competent authority in New York will transmit a request for service to the relevant authority in the UK (the High Court).
So here, this process has been available for the claimant’s lawyers to use right from the start. You are not tied into this mode of service, but it is available and convenient when, for example, it is the summer holidays, and your defendant may either be at his normal residence in Windsor, or staying at his mother’s estate in Scotland, and you are not sure which. It will also be useful where you know, for example, that you can’t just walk up tot he front door of whichever location he turns out to be.
What the lawyers did in this case was send someone to Prince Andrew’s house, the Royal Lodge. Delivery to someone’s “usual or last known address” is fine for service under UK laws. I’ve already pointed out however that NY law requires the service to be valid under NY law, and the courts there don’t care what the local jurisdiction thinks is adequate. So, if service at the usual address isn’t enough under NY law, the claimant’s NY lawyers will have known this. Getting service right is entirely their responsibility. They could have used The Hague Convention process form the outset, because the problems in serving Andrew were fairly obvious. So yes, they have stuffed up.
If I was the client and my lawyer got service wrong, and needed to make a court application to rectify the situation, you can bet I won’t be paying them for the first attempt that didn’t meet the riles.