New York City Litigants Can Now Reach Canada By Mail

A recent decision from New York's First Judicial Department now allows for service by mail to Canada.

What You Need To Know

• Lawsuits filed in all New York state courts can be served on Canadian parties by mail.
• This recent decision aligns practice in New York's busiest commercial court in Manhattan with the rest of New York state courts.

For signatories including Canada and the United States, the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents governs the method by which court documents for a litigation in one country are properly delivered to parties in another country. 

Many jurisdictions have interpreted Article 10(a) of the Hague Convention to permit service of process—the delivery of documents initiating a lawsuit—to be made by mail if the defendant's country has not objected to such service.  Because Canada has not objected to service by mail, a plaintiff in numerous U.S. jurisdictions can serve a lawsuit simply by