On February 25, 2026, a panel of the Seventh Circuit held oral argument in the case of Kangol LLC v. Hangzhou Chuanyue Silk Import & Export Co., Ltd., No. 25-2205. The appeal arises out of an unsuccessful attempt to void a default judgment against a Chinese entity in a Schedule A case (click here for a description of Schedule A cases). As fans of Schedule A cases know, however, the juicy issue being litigated across the country is whether and in what circumstances a plaintiff can serve a summons and complaint on a defendant in a Schedule A case by email. In particular, email service raises thorny issues in matters involving defendant entities from countries that have objected to service of process by postal channels, such as China, as I have written about previously. Appellant Hangzhou Chuanyue’s Statement of the Issues framed this as a question of whether (to paraphrase) the Convention on Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil and Commercial Matters, Nov. 15, 1965 (the “Hague Service Convention”) provides for exclusive methods of service of process (when it is applicable), and whether email service is an objected to “postal channel” or otherwise inconsistent with the prescribed methods of the Hague Service Convention. I listened to the hearing to get a sense of what issues seemed to concern the judges on the panel. I do not intend to summarize the back and forth between the panel and the litigants or try to read the tea leaves about how the panel may rule based on its questions.
Some of the questions were about practicality. The panel asked Hangzhou Chuanyue’s counsel what impact a ruling in his client’s favor would have on other cases like it. Would it simply create an obligation for a plaintiff to tell a district court what efforts it made to identify a physical address for a defendant? This relates to the threshold question of whether the Hague Service Convention even applies, because it “shall not apply where the address of the person to be served with the document is not known.” (Hague Service Convention, Art. 1.)
Another question about the practical impact of the ruling related to whether the Seventh Circuit would be striking out on its own depending on how it rules. The panel asked Kangol’s counsel whether ruling in his client’s favor would create a circuit split. The panel alluded to rulings in the Second and Third Circuits that email service of process is not allowed if the Hague Service Convention applies. In further questioning during Hangzhou Chuanyue’s counsel’s rebuttal time, the panel also inquired about whether an opinion out of the Fifth Circuit was consistent with the Second and Third Circuits on this issue.
The panel peppered both counsel with the meaty questions of whether China has objected to service of process by email, and whether a district court may order service by “other means” under Rule 4(f)(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure without considering whether to apply “internationally agreed means of service” under Rule 4(f)(1) at all.
But it is possible that the resolution of this appeal will be anticlimactic if one is awaiting another take on email service from a Court of Appeals. This is because there are other questions at issue in the appeal that if decided adversely to Hangzhou Chuanyue would moot the need to rule on the substance of the Hague Service Convention questions. Kangol is challenging the timeliness of Hangzhou Chuanyue’s motion to void the judgment and asserting that Hangzhou Chuanyue’s conduct waived its right to contest the judgment based on improper service of process. If the Seventh Circuit affirms on either of these grounds, then it will not need to reach the merits of the Hague Service Convention issues.
