Successful service of a notice is a deceptively difficult task: Taylor Briggs & Michael Ranson serve up a recent reminder from the courts
- The Court of Appeal decision in Khan v D’Aubigny highlights the complexities of serving notices, and contains a number of useful points of interest.
- These include the scope of s 7, Interpretation Act 1978, the meaning of the word ‘notice’, and the role of evidence in proving that a document has not, in fact, ever been received.
- The judgment underscores the importance of clearly defining a ‘notice’ for the purposes of an agreement, and taking care when agreeing deemed service provisions.
The seemingly simple act of ‘serving a notice’ is a task which clients often believe is easy, but which most practitioners know can be fraught with difficulty. The recent Court of Appeal decision in Khan and another v D’Aubigny [2025] EWCA Civ 11 has once again forced practitioners to take a closer look at how notices are served, including certain important statutory provisions, the way in which contracts might deem service to have
