PRACTICE

Claim form - overseas company obtaining business through commission agent in UK - delivery of claim form to agent's address not valid service on companyRakusens Ltd v Baser Ambalaj Plastik Sanayi Ticaret AS: CA (Lords Justice Buxton and Arden and Mr Justice Bodey): 15 October 2001The claimants brought an action for damages against the defendants, a company manufacturing in Turkey, for the supply of defective goods.

The claim was delivered to the address of the defendants' agent in the UK.

The agent was an independent contractor who received orders and transmitted them to the defendants in Turkey but had no authority to conclude business on the defendants' behalf.

The defendants denied that the provisions of section 695(2) of the Companies Act 1985 rendered such delivery valid service and applied to set aside the claim.

Judge McGonigal, sitting as a High Court judge in Leeds, refused the application.

The defendants appealed.David Berkley QC and Jonathan Rule (instructed by McCormicks, Leeds) for the defendants.

Michael Rollason (instructed by Pinsent Curtis Biddle, Leeds) for the claimants.Held, allowing the appeal and setting the claim aside, that section 695(2) of the Companies Act 1985 provided for service of documents at 'any place of business established by the company in Great Britain'; that, applying the guidance as to what constituted a place of business given in Adams v Cape Industries plc [1990] Ch 433, 530, since the agent was a commission agent unable to conclude business for the defendants his address was not a place of business of the defendants; and that, accordingly, the judge had misdirected himself and the claim would be set aside because it had not been validly served.