BL-2021-002235 - [2025] EWHC 1966 (Ch)

I turn now to the respondent’s contentions that he has not been properly served with this application nor indeed properly joined to the proceedings. The respondent appears to be under the impression that service of a document for the purpose of legal proceedings is invalidated if the document is not addressed to the person actually served by the name which that person currently wishes to be known by. As a matter of English law, this is wrong. Subject to statutory provision providing differently, the question is always one of intention, gathered from the document itself in the context of the surrounding circumstances. Was this document intended for that person? cf Harmond Properties Ltd v Gajdzis [1968] 1 WLR 1858, CA; Edgeworth Capital (Luxembourg) Sarl v Cuatrecasas Gonçalves Pereira LLP[2025] EWHC 1014 (Ch) [54].

Thus, service of a document referring to “Jon Smith” is still valid if effected by a lawful method on a person whose current name is “John Smith”, if the person on whom it was in fact served was the person intended to be served. Obviously, if there are two people called “John Smith”, one involved in legal proceedings and the other not, and a document intended for service on one is by accident served on the other, there will be no good service on the former. And although there may be “good” service on the latter, that will be irrelevant for the purposes of the proceedings.

The respondent says that he changed his name by deed poll, enrolled in the High Court on 10 March 2024. This is not quite accurate. In English law, your name is what others call you. You change your name by getting others to call you by your new name, and not by making or filing a document. A deed poll is simply evidence of your wish to change your name, and to get others to use the new one in relation to you. It is not the only kind of evidence that can be used for this purpose: statutory declarations are also frequently employed. And indeed, no formal evidence is needed at all. For example, the traditional convention (but it was and is only a convention) was that a woman on marriage adopted the name of her husband without any further evidence. As for enrolment of a deed poll, this is not a judicial act, and adds nothing in law to its validity or effect. It simply makes it easier to locate it. (See, generally, O’Driscoll v Clayton [2024] EWHC 1118 (Ch), [22]-[29].)

A change of name does not involve a change of legal personality. You are the same person in law after changing your name as you were before. All your rights and liabilities remain the same. If a woman marries and changes her name to that of her husband, she cannot avoid being sued for wrongs committed by her in her maiden name. Nor, if she is sued in her maiden name, can she avoid the proceedings simply by saying that she is now called something different.

In the present case, there is no room for doubt that the respondent was the person intended to be served with documents in this litigation, even if his name in the documents concerned was not spelt exactly as the respondent would wish. Nor does it make any difference that there is an unlimited liability company with the same name as him (also incorporated in March 2024). That company has nothing to do with this litigation, and the applicant’s intention was clearly to apply against the respondent, rather than against the company. There is accordingly nothing in the respondent’s points about not being properly served or joined.