Time bar and service of Scottish court proceedings on parties outside Scotland

In case you missed it, towards the end of last year we delivered a free webinar on two topics that at first glance might seem relatively unrelated: time bar (or "prescription and limitation", to use the technical term) and service of Scottish civil court proceedings on defenders based outside Scotland.

What's the connection between these topics? The answer is that, in Scotland, validly serving court papers is essential in order to "stop the clock" for the purposes of calculating whether or not the claim has become time barred, but since Brexit, it takes much longer to serve proceedings on a party based in the EU than it used to (spoiler: you now need to allow many months, as opposed to service within the EU previously taking weeks or even only a matter of days).

In this webinar, we provided an overview of how time bar works in Scotland, what methods are available for serving Scottish court proceedings on defenders based abroad and gave some practical advice about what you need to do if you are thinking about raising a claim to make sure don't lose your rights due to the passage of time. The webinar can be viewed here.