CA-2025-001079 & CA-2025-002078 - [2025] EWCA Civ 1262

Before coming to Google’s appeal, it is necessary to identify the precise nature of Mr Robertson’s default and the remedy available to cure it. I have already said that the judge had found that there had been no valid service of the claim form on 5 April 2022. In consequence, at paragraph 30 of his appeal skeleton argument, Mr Boch properly concedes that service on 5 April 2022 without Form N510 meant that the claim form had not been properly, or effectively, served. The conventional position, where a claim form cannot be or is not properly served within the specified period, is for the claimant to seek an extension of time for service.

However, because he was aware that Mr Robertson could not meet the stringent rules relating to an extension of time in which to serve his claim form, the first part of Mr Boch’s original application put the relief sought in rather general terms: see paragraph 17 above. The judge followed that wording in the order that he made (paragraph 21 above).

On appeal, Mr Boch continued to keep away from the rules relating to extensions of time for service. Now he characterised what the judge did as giving “retrospective permission to dispense with Form N510” (see paragraph 1(d) of his appeal skeleton). At paragraph 3 of the same skeleton he maintained that the judge’s order was that the claim form was deemed served on the day it was delivered, “the requirement for Form N510 effectively having been dispensed with under r.6.34(2)(b)”.

In addition, Mr Boch submitted at paragraph 6 that “when the claim form was delivered without Form N510, service of the claim form was ‘suspended’ pending the granting of ‘permission’ under r.6.34(2)(b). The effect of that permission, once retrospectively granted, was that the need to file and serve Form N510 was obviated, rendering delivery on 5 April 2022 valid service as at that date”.

Finally, Mr Boch constantly sought to play down the significance of Form N510, arguing at various times that it was an unimportant form with just one box that had to be ticked; that it did not even have to be correctly completed in order to effect valid service; and that ultimately it had no practical implication or importance.

Mr Boch’s submissions were ingenious, but I cannot accept them. They were not the submissions that he made to the judge. At no time did the judge find, either in his judgment or in the order, that the need to serve or file Form N510 had somehow been obviated. In any event, it would not have been open to the judge to so find, since the requirement for Form N510 is mandatory (the word “must” in r.6.34(1) makes that plain). Not only is the Form mandatory, but its importance is the subject of clear authority: see paragraph 11 above.

I should add that I profoundly disagree with the suggestion that the statement of reasonable belief in Form N510 is somehow unimportant. On the contrary, because it is accompanied with a statement of truth, serious consequences can flow from any misstatements in Form N510. It must always be remembered that, in circumstances like this, the correctness of the assertion in Form N510 is the only reason that the court’s permission to serve out of the jurisdiction has not been sought in the first place.

Most important of all, not only is there nothing in the judgment or in the order about the concept of “suspending the service of the claim form”, but there is nothing whatsoever in any of the rules, or any of the authorities, that allows for or condones a regime where the invalid service of a claim form can somehow be “suspended” whilst the necessary formalities in respect of Form N510 are belatedly undertaken, with the result that, much later (and after the time limit for filing a defence has passed), the invalid service suddenly becomes valid. Such a practice would give rise to all sorts of muddle and confusion, and would potentially render redundant the entire system of extensions of time for the service of claim forms outside the jurisdiction.