PENNSYLVANIA PROFESSIONAL PROCESS SERVICE

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FILING AND SERVICE OF FOREIGN SUBPOENAS

We serve foreign subpoenas throughout PA. We have teamed with the Rominger & Associates law firm to provide the requisite legal representation. We will coordinate with them to have the papers filed and served. They do all the necessary drafting and will work with your firm to make the foreign subpoena process work for you.

They have provided the following information for your use:

Often it is necessary to serve a subpoena, request for documents, or deposition notice in Pennsylvania in conjunction with a case from another state. We routinely help law firms from around the United States secure such subpoenas and deposition notices in the appropriate Pennsylvania courts.

Basically, Pennsylvania will honor a request for a subpoena or hearing notice if the foreign court (the court of your state) issues what's called a commission. The commission should be as specific as possible as there is Pennsylvania case law that from time to time has found commissions to be too general.

Once we have the commission we recommend you prepare a subpoena as if you were doing it in your own state so that we can use that as a form to go off of. We take your commission and the subpoena that you've prepared as if you were going to issue the subpoena in the normal course of business and attach them to a petition where we ask the court to issue a Pennsylvania subpoena or appropriate notice which we then serve upon the necessary party.

It should be noted that Pennsylvania has several different types of subpoenas and notices and the courts would generally require us not only to be in compliance with your rules of civil procedure or other applicable rules but also in the general precepts of the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure. This can create a little bit of a delay if you haven't given requisite notice of the intent to seek a subpoena that our rules often require.

If the subpoena is for documents or things to a third party in the lawsuit or for a deposition or other matter to a third party, generally our courts expect to see a 20-day notice as well as a sample of the subpoena to be sent to all the parties in the action before the non party is served and each party is given 20 days to object or waive their objection. The objection is deemed waived if no reply is received within 20 days. This means that once we have prepared a sample of what we intend to file and ask the Pennsylvania courts to do we need to send out a 20 day notice to all the other parties.

We can do this for you or work with you to prepare the necessary notices, but it is a prerequisite to obtaining most subpoenas and subpoenas duces tecum. If the subpoena is to attend and testify at a hearing no 20-day notice is required, and it can include the provision of bringing things. The idea being that parties should not be able to issue subpoenas and fish without other parties being aware of the same which is to some extent logical. Thus a subpoena to attend and testify and to bring the documents with you to said hearing would not prejudice the other parties as you would not have those things in advance.

Additionally, if you are seeking a live deposition of a deponent who is either a party or a non party, the foreign court commission should be very specific. We have seen case law where some courts have rejected issuing deposition subpoenas because they felt the foreign commission was too broad and not limited in its scope. This is particularly problematic because other cases have held that this is not appealable until the underlying lawsuit in the other state is completed even though it might logically be deemed to be a collateral matter in this state (Pennsylvania). Our intermediate appellate court has not taken that position, nor should you wan to be the test case..

So if you are interested in having foreign subpoenas served anywhere in Pennsylvania, our firm can help you. We will work with you to design a commission if necessary, to design the subpoenas, and to make sure you're compliant with the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure and in compliance with local court rules for the various counties.

Finally, we advise people that because each county court can take anywhere from a few days to more than a month to act upon a petition seeking a foreign subpoena, and because of the possible 20-day notices which you will have to prepare and mail out that when you seek your commission you should figure or plan on at least 60 to 75 days from the date you intend to have us begin processing the matter for the date in question. Obviously, if it's an emergency matter we may be able to expedite it but there would be additional filings and expense.

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Pennsylvania Professional Process Service is a division of Rominger, Inc. and a member of NAPPS. Pennsylvania Professional Process Service can handle all of your services in Pennsylvania. Not only can we serve Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, we can cost effectively serve the rural counties as well.- learn more