In a civil case in a federal US court, can I serve the lawsuit upon a lawyer who is representing the defendant in another case?

Question

Suppose I am suing Joe Smith, who happens to be involved in another ongoing case, Joe Smith vs. Mike Michaels, where Smith is represented by Sue Yoo.

Can I serve my lawsuit to Sue Yoo? Does that count as having served it to Joe Smith?

Answer 1

england-and-wales

You can't, unless you first obtain the court's permission. The rules for service are set out in Part 6 of the Civil Procedure Rules.

CPR 6.3 sets out the permitted methods of service (e.g. personal service, post, email, etc.) and the subsequent rules lay down further requirements for those methods.

CPR 6.7 provides:

Solicitor within the jurisdiction: Subject to rule 6.5(1), where –

(a) the defendant has given in writing the business address within the jurisdiction of a solicitor as an address at which the defendant may be served with the claim form; or

(b) a solicitor acting for the defendant has notified the claimant in writing that the solicitor is instructed by the defendant to accept service of the claim form on behalf of the defendant at a business address within the jurisdiction,

the claim form must be served at the business address of that solicitor.

Neither case is applicable here. CPR 6.9(1) and (2) state:

(1) This rule applies where – [...]; (b) rule 6.7 (service of claim form on solicitor); and [...], do not apply and the claimant does not wish to effect personal service under rule 6.5(2).

(2) Subject to paragraphs (3) to (6), the claim form must be served on the defendant at the place shown in the following table.

None of the rules I've blanked out above apply to service on solicitors and we've established that rule 6.7 doesn't apply. This means that you're forced to either use one of those other methods of service, or use the table in CPR 6.9. For service on an individual in relation to a non-business matter, the table requires you to serve at their usual or last known residence.

The above rules can be overridden with the court's permission under CPR 6.15(1):

Where it appears to the court that there is a good reason to authorise service by a method or at a place not otherwise permitted by this Part, the court may make an order permitting service by an alternative method or at an alternative place.

The court will likely expect you to have first taken reasonable steps to try to ascertain the defendant's residential address (see CPR 6.9(3) - (5)), and you'll have to justify why there is a "good reason" to serve on the defendant's solicitor from an unrelated case. That likely means that you'll have to show that all other methods of service are infeasible.

CPR 6.15(2) allows the court to retrospectively deem an action to be valid service so if you are confident that your application under 6.15(1) will succeed then you can pre-emptively serve the solicitor before receiving the court's decision. It also might be necessary to do this if you are at risk of missing the deadline for service and you don't think the court will decide the application in time.

Answer 2

Only if the lawyer were the Registered Agent for a company, or were ordered to accept service for his client by the client

Since John Doe is not a company, and Sue Yoo is not the registered Agent, you can not assume that you can provide service to John Doe through Sue Yoo at Sue Yoo's office. While Sue Yoo might have agreed to accept service of cases for John Doe, that is not a given, and can not be relied upon. In general, that would not be the case, and Sue Yoo may not say anything about their lawyer-client relationship unless John Doe explicitly allows it.

However, it is legal in many united-states jurisdictions to send your process server to the trial of John Doe and wait there for a moment to serve John. As long as your server does not disturb the process and follows the court's regulations, that is legal. The moment of service would be most likely either before the day starts, when a break happens or when the day of procedures ends, and also most likely required to be outside the court room, like on the hallway in front of it.