The application usually reaches me on paper, a few days after the deadline it asks me to move. A claim went in during the last week of the limitation period, the claim form stayed on the file while the parties talked, and four months and a day later the claimant’s solicitor wants more time to serve it. When I sit as a fee-paid county court judge, I read that application knowing how little room the rules leave me to help.
Rule 7.5 of the Civil Procedure Rules is brief. Where the claim form is to be served within the jurisdiction, the claimant must complete the step the chosen method requires, whether posting it, leaving it at the address or sending the email, before midnight on the calendar day four months after the date of issue. Issuing the claim stops time running for limitation and starts a second period, which in the files I see gets a fraction of the attention the first one did.
Once the four months have gone, rule 7.6 allows an extension only where the court itself failed to serve, or where the claimant took all reasonable steps to serve and was unable to, and in either case only where the application comes promptly. Negotiation is not a reasonable step towards service. Nor is a letter from the defendant’s solicitors saying they will take instructions, or a belief that the other side knew all about the claim. Where limitation has expired since issue, refusing the extension ends the claim, and the client’s next claim is often against the firm.
Where service goes wrong
The claim form is seldom forgotten outright. Somebody meant to serve it and chose a method the rules did not permit. Email causes the most trouble, because a party can be served by email only where it, or the solicitor acting for it, has said beforehand in writing that it will accept service that way and has given the address to use. An email address at the foot of a solicitor’s letter is not that statement unless the letter itself says the firm accepts service at that address. In Barton v Wright Hassall in 2018 the Supreme Court declined to validate a claim form that a litigant in person had emailed to the defendant’s solicitors without that indication, although it reached them in time, and with limitation expired the claim was lost.
Service on solicitors who never had authority to accept it comes next. A firm that writes to say it acts for a defendant has not by that letter agreed to accept service. A claimant who sends the claim form to that firm instead of to the defendant has served nobody, unless the defendant gave that firm’s address for service in writing or the firm confirmed in writing that it has instructions to accept service. The calendar accounts for the rest. A fee earner who counts the four months from the day the sealed claim form came back from the court, rather than from the date of issue printed on it, finishes late with a diary entry that looks careful.
A second date on every issued claim
On the day the sealed claim form arrives, diary the last day for service with its working beside it, being the date of issue, the rule, the method chosen and the step that method requires. Where the method is to be email or service on solicitors, put the written indication or confirmation on the file before relying on it. Where talks are running, agree an extension in writing with the other side or apply to the court before the four months end, since an application made in time escapes the test in rule 7.6(3), although the court still asks for a good reason. Serve in the first month where the client’s position allows, and three months stay spare for the failures nobody predicted.
Bracton treats the date of issue as a trigger like any other. On the platform, once a fee earner records the date of issue from the sealed claim form, the engine applies the rule and writes the last day for service in the diary with the arithmetic in its note. A firm contracted to LEAP, Clio, Proclaim or another system takes the assistant on its own, reading through the firm’s document store or through the interface that system provides where its terms allow. It reads every live file overnight, and a claim issued with no service recorded is the kind of file that read exists to put before a fee earner by morning. Whatever it drafts waits for approval. What it reaches in your system we state in writing at proposal.
The fairest test sits in your own files. List every claim your firm has issued in the last six months and set the date and method of service beside each date of issue. If that list takes more than an hour to build, bring a handful of those matters and we will run the software across them with you when you book a client account review.