Can the Gardai do this?

Zambia wrote: »

So the Moral of the story is the Garda should have left the summons with the family in the first place.

They did leave the summons with the family.The family never contacted him so he never got it or never heard about it.The Statute of Limitations was up and the Judge felt that the guards hadn,t made any real effort to track him down and serve the summons.

The family had told the guards that they weren,t in contact with the man, didn,t know were he lived and wouldn,t be passing it onto him.The defence solicitor asked the guard had he made many efforts in tracking down the man.He said they had.But when he asked what they had done and the guard checked his notes it turned out they had called around twice in a short space of time to the family home(were he hadn,t lived for years) and had then done nothing for years.The judge tossed it as he felt these efforts were insufficient.

kbannon wrote: »

From reading slimjimmc's quoted piece, the garda is within their rights to give it to a relative. However, it does not say that the relative is obliged to accept it (although the quoted piece is not the actual legislation).

Order 10 of S.I. No. 93/1997 seems to be the relevant legaleese (dunno if it has been amended since).

One interesting statement allows the Court to consider a summons to validly served regardless of the method employed:

15. The Court may, if it sees fit so to do, deem the service of any document actually effected in any proceedings, even though not effected in a manner prescribed by these Rules, to be good and effected service.

I'm presuming that summons' aren't treated like normal mail where it would be an offence for someone to impede the delivery of such?

That is, if she knew where he was, but left it sitting in the house without telling him, would that be an offence?