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Anons 17:40 & 18.23 21 February 2018
The handback was in fact included within the Supreme Court's ruling so that's a non-starter, particularly when Barton hadn't read it.

"19. Mr Barton contends that CPR rule 6.3 and Practice Direction 6A are inaccessible and obscure. I do not accept this. They are accessible on the internet. Part 6 is clearly headed “Service of Documents”. Electronic service under rule 6.3 is expressly required to be in accordance with Practice Direction 6A, which is prominently flagged in the table of contents. Furthermore, when the claim form was issued, the Courts Service sent Mr Barton in the usual way on 26 February 2013 a blank certificate of service for him to complete when he had served it. This included the statement: “Rules relating to the service of documents are contained in Part 6 of the Civil Procedure Rules (www.justice.gov.uk) and you should refer to the rules for information.” Since he did not in fact refer to them, their alleged obscurity is perhaps immaterial. But they are not in my view obscure. They do not justify Mr Barton’s assumption that Berrymans would accept service in that way unless they said otherwise. On the contrary, the paragraph 4.1(2)(b) of the Practice Direction clearly states that even where a solicitor’s writing paper includes an email address, service by that means was permissible “only where it is stated that the email address may be used for service.” It is fair to say that others have made the same mistake as Mr Barton, including the authors of A Handbook for Litigants in Person, ed HHJ Edward Bailey (2013), at p 157. But this is not for want of clarity in the rules. As it happens, Mr Barton never saw the Handbook, which was published after his abortive attempt at service. The salient facts in his case are that he was by June 2013 an experienced litigant. He knew, as he accepts, about limitation. He knew that not all solicitors accepted service by email. Yet, apart from looking at the legal notices on Berrymans’ website (which said nothing about email service), he took no steps to check whether Berrymans did so, or to ascertain what the rules regarding service by email were, but simply relied on his own assumption."