FEDERAL COURT OF AUSTRALIA

PRACTICE & PROCEDURE - address for service - whether a post office box can be an address for service in compliance with the Federal Court Rules - whether a post office box is “the address of a place ... at which documents in the proceeding may, during ordinary business hours, be left for the person whose address for service it is ...” for the purposes of O 7 r 6(1) of the Rules.

DAVID SARIKAYA v VICTORIAN WORKCOVER AUTHORITY

VG481 of 1997

BLACK CJ

MELBOURNE

8  DECEMBER 1997

THE COURT ORDERS THAT:

            1.         The appellant file and serve within 7 days a notice showing an address for                                  service in compliance with O 7 r 6(2) of the Federal Court Rules.

            2.         The appeal be listed for hearing during the sittings of a Full Court in Melbourne              to be held in March 1998 on a date to be notified by the Victorian District                           Registrar.

            3.         Liberty be reserved to either party to apply.

Note:                Settlement and entry of orders is dealt with in Order 36 of the Federal Court Rules.

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

BLACK CJ:

At the callover of the list of appeals for hearing during the next Full Court sittings in Melbourne, the solicitor for the respondent submitted that the present appeal should be adjourned to the next callover for two reasons.  The first concerned the filing and service of appeal books, a matter that has now been resolved.  The other reason was that the appellant did not, so it was argued, have an address for service which complied with the Federal Court Rules. 

The argument before me proceeded upon the basis (contrary to what appears in the notice of appeal) that the appellant’s present address for service is a Melbourne post office box.  The respondent submits that the Rules do not permit this.  For reasons that are not presently relevant, the appellant does not wish to use his residential or business address as his address for service.

Order 52 r 12(1) provides:

“An appeal shall be instituted by filing a notice of appeal which shall be in or substantially in the form numbered 55 in the First Schedule.”

Form 55 is a form of notice of appeal and it requires the appellant’s address for service to be specified.  The requirements for an address for service are contained in O 7 r 6(1), which provides:

“An address for service must be the address of a place within the District for the Registry in which the originating process is filed (other than the document exchange referred to in rule 7 of this Order), at which documents in the proceedings may, during ordinary business hours, be left for the person whose address for service it is and to which documents in the proceeding may be posted for that person.”

Order 7 r 6(2) provides that the address for service for a person represented by a solicitor  should be the office of the solicitor or his agent and O 7 r 7 allows a person whose address for service is the office of a solicitor who uses the facilities of a document exchange to authorize service “at” a document exchange box. 

The question whether a post office box can be an address for service in compliance with O 7   r 6(1) has apparently not been the subject of previous decision.  The short point is whether a post office box is “the address of a place ... at which documents in the proceeding may, during ordinary business hours, be left for [a] person...”.  The language of the sub-rule makes it clear that this requirement is additional to the requirement that the address be one to which documents in the proceeding may be posted.

In the present context, a post office box is not, in my view, the “address of a place” at which a document may be “left” for a person.  The ordinary notion of a “post office box” is of a container at a post office into which mail that has been duly posted is placed by the postal authorities for retrieval by or on behalf of the holder of the box.  Whether or not such a box is, in this context, the “address of a place”, it is not the address of a place at which a document may be “left” by way of service.

The special provision in O 7 r 7 for authorising service at a solicitor’s document exchange box tends to confirm the conclusion I have reached about the scope of O 7 r 6.

The irregularity with respect to the appellant’s address for service is not, however, something which of itself should result in his appeal being delayed.  Instead of standing the matter over to the next callover, the appropriate order is that the appellant should, within 7 days, file and serve a notice showing an address for service in conformity with the Rules.  I direct that, upon the filing of such a notice, the appellant’s appeal be listed for hearing during the Full Court in Melbourne to be held in March 1998 on a date to be notified to the parties by the Victorian District Registrar.  I reserve liberty to either party to apply.

There will be no order as to costs.

Associate:

Dated:              8 December 1997