Service of Process - ISDA Provision
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2002 ISDA Master Agreement A Jolly Contrarian owner’s manual™
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Overview
2002 version of ISDA’s crack drafting squad™ were properly phoning it in on this one. There are some changes, but none of them mean anything.
Summary
English law
Process agent
/ˈprəʊsɛs ˈeɪʤᵊnt/ (n.)
An agent located in a jurisdiction who is appointed by a contracting counterparty outside that jurisdiction to accept service of legal proceedings filed against it in the courts of that jurisdiction, to discharge the procedural requirement that they are physically served within the jurisdiction.
For English law contracts the jurisdiction in question is that of “the courts of England and Wales” — there is no such thing as United Kingdom law — the rules of English civil court procedure[1] require process physically to be served within England or Wales (or, in theory, their adjacent territorial waters[2]). Service in Scotland — or its territorial waters — will not do. This means you can serve process on someone rowing a boat in the Bristol Channel, but not in Inverness, much less on someone escaping in rowing a boat to, for example, the Isle of Skye.
A contracting counterparty whom you cannot rely on being in England or Wales should you have to sue it — one who has no permanent place of business there — you might ask to appoint as its agent a company who reliably will be there, and who is prepared to receive process served upon the counterparty and pass it on to head office. That person is a “process agent”.
The best kind of process agent is an English-domiciled affiliate of the contracting entity who is happy to perform that role, as it generally will do it for free. But if you don’t have one, there are dedicated process agency businesses who will act as your process agent for, naturally enough, a suitably outrageous fee.
New York law
The New York rules of civil procedure are here. As you might expect, they seem complicated. CT Corporation seems to charge a lot for serving process — so we assume there is a reason for that.
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- The JC’s famous Nutshell™ summary of this clause
See also
For a wide-ranging discussion of the merits of process agents — when you need one; when, notwithstanding the ISDA form you don’t — and what all this has to do with rowing dinghies in the Bristol Channel (some), dingy coffee emporia in old Glasgae toon (less), and the conduct of commerce by foreigners in New York city (none at all) — see our lovely article about process agents in general.
References
- ↑ Rule 6.11 of Part 6, details freaks.
- ↑ I find the idea of serving in territorial waters strangely fascinating. In the rules of English civil court procedure “jurisdiction” is defined as “unless the context requires otherwise, England and Wales and any part of the territorial waters of the United Kingdom adjoining England and Wales” so, therefore, those of the Her Majesty’s territorial waters which adjoin Scotland or Northern Ireland are out of bounds.