On January 15, 2013, the US District Court for the District of South Carolina issued a decision clarifying that the plaintiff's counsel (not the court clerk) should initiate service of process under the Hague Service Convention.

The Hague Service Convention is a multilateral treaty governing service of process and other judicial documents between its contracting states. The Convention's primary innovation is that it creates a procedure by which the plaintiff in one contracting state may serve process on a defendant located in another contracting state through the latter state's designated Central Authority (Hague Service Convention, art. 2-7). More than 60 countries, including the US and Mexico, have ratified the Hague Service Convention.

The plaintiff moved to have the Clerk of Court for the District of South Carolina (where the underlying action was pending) transmit its complaint to the Mexican Central Authority for service on a defendant in Mexico. The plaintiff argued that it was proper for the court clerk to send the complaint to the Mexican Central Authority because Article 3 of the Hague Service Convention requires an "authority or judicial officer competent under the law of the State in which the documents originate [to] forward" the complaint to the destination state's Central Authority.

While acknowledging that the Convention's use of the phrase "authority or judicial officer" is broad enough to encompass court personnel, the court nevertheless denied plaintiff's request. In so holding, the court reasoned that:

Navigating even the most basic procedures in international litigation can be a difficult and time-consuming task. One reason is that most US lawyers do not regularly handle cross-border disputes. Another is that the treaties governing international litigation are often written from a non-US perspective, and use technical language that lawyers from the US may not be accustomed to. In light of the Charleston Aluminum decision, US lawyers can at least take comfort knowing that they may initiate a service request under the Hague Convention without seeking the court's assistance.

Moreover, Charleston Aluminum highlights that counsel should be cautious before applying to the court for help with a service request under the Hague Convention. Generally, courts prefer not to expend their limited resources assisting parties with service requests that could just as easily be handled by the parties themselves. If problems do arise, the federal rules allow US courts to intervene and help move the process along (see, for example, FRCP 4(f)(2)(C)(ii) (court clerk may mail complaint to foreign defendant) and FRCP 4(f)(3) (court may order alternate service method)).