Latest trend in litigation nationwide: tire manufacturers, worldwide, sued in the United States for price fixing. These suits are huge, wrangling some of the world’s best known manufacturers from Italy to Germany to Finland to Japan… but the fact that they’re brought under the Sherman Act has no connection to the method by which they must be served. Simply put, if the defendant manufacturers are in Hague Service Convention jurisdictions, they have to be served in a very particular manner, almost always involving translation, and very often with methodology limited to what I term “Five-O” service.
These cases affect anybody who drives a car, rides in a car, rides a bus, flies in an airplane, trains like this guy, eats anything harvested with a tractor… you get the idea. It’s everybody. When tire price collusion involves so many manufacturers, all of us pay for it. And we want to hold the bad guys responsible.
But from a service of process perspective, these cases are not extraordinary. There aren’t special rules for them, and there’s not an exemption from Hague requirements unless they waive or somebody in the United States waives or accepts for the offshore defendants.