Procedural omissions for service out of the jurisdiction will not impact issuance of a claim for the purposes of limitation.

By Robert Price and Duncan Graves

In Chelfat v. Hutchinson 3G UK Limited [2022] EWCA Civ 455, the UK Court of Appeal recently determined the effect of a procedural failure in relation to service of a claim outside of the jurisdiction without permission, including whether such failure entitled the court to refuse to issue a claim form, and the consequences for potential limitation defences.

Service out of the jurisdiction without permission is increasingly prevalent in practice following amendments to the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) post-Brexit on 6 April 2021 to allow such service when the underlying contract has an English jurisdiction clause. If the court’s permission is not required for service out of the jurisdiction, as set out under CPR 6.32 (Northern Ireland or Scotland) and 6.33 (outside of the UK), CPR 6.34(1) provides that a party must file and serve with the claim form a notice containing a statement of the grounds on which the claimant is entitled to serve the claim form out of the jurisdiction. Practice Direction 6, paragraph 2.1 provides that the notice should be on Practice Form N510 (Form N510). CPR 6.34(2) sets out that unless the claimant has filed the claim form with a copy of Form N510, the claim form cannot be served without permission from the court.

The decision in Chelfat clarifies that failure to comply with the procedural requirements for service out of the jurisdiction should not prevent the claim form from being issued. As a result, failure to file Form N510 will not displace the general rule that time ceases to run for the purposes of a limitation period upon the issue of the claim form.