A client asked an interesting question last week being, “Can documents be served upon an individual inside the court house?..”
It is a very rare occasion to say the least, I can personally only think of two times I have performed this myself, the first back in 1985 and the second a few years later.
The first time the person to be served was recognized and was asked to step outside into the hallway and service was performed there.
The second time the person was in custody and was appearing for his hearing, in this case the Crown attorney was approached and informed on who needed to be served. The Crown then arranged for service to be performed in the holding cells in the court house.
In both cases service was performed inside the court house, but not “inside” the court room itself.
The court room has always been recognized as a place were the judge only can perform legal matters.
Think about your favourite television police show were the police whom are wanting to arrest an individual that is standing trial, wait till he/she exits the court room and is then (re) arrested. I am sure you get the picture.
For the service we handled this week a person that knew the one to be served pointed them out to us and service was performed outside the court house.
The law firm handing this file said there may be case law on this and are currently trying to find it.
