TAIWAN Law and Practice Contributed by: Peng-Kwang Chen, I-Ming Chen, Pamela Huang and Claudia Huang, Formosa Transnational Attorneys At Law
3.5 Rules of Service The rules of service are generally as follows: • service authority – service is typically performed by court clerks; • party to be served – service is usually directed to the parties involved themselves. However, there are exceptions, such as serving their legal representa- tives or attorneys; • place of service – service is made to the recipient’s residence or place of business; and • method of service – the court clerk will, in principle, send the documents to the parties through postal service. The plaintiff must submit an initial complaint along with identical copies to the court. The court will serve the same on the defendants. For documents other than the initial complaint, judges may request that both parties send them directly to the other party without the court’s assistance. To serve a foreign defendant, the plaintiff must pro- vide the defendant’s foreign address to the court. The court will then request service through compe- tent authorities in the foreign jurisdiction or through Taiwan’s embassies, or other official organisations or agencies abroad. If the foreign address is unknown or the service at the provided address fails, the plaintiff may petition for service by public notice. 3.6 Failure to Respond If the defendant has been lawfully served with a subpoena and fails to appear before the court with- out proper reasons, the court may, upon the plain- tiff’s request, or ex officio after successive failures to respond, enter a default judgment based on the appearing party’s arguments. 3.7 Representative or Collective Actions In Taiwan, collective or representative actions are per- mitted in various scenarios, including the following. • A specific group may bring a class action on behalf of an unspecified number of individuals in the case of harm arising from public nuisance, product defects, or environmental pollution where the vic-
tim or consumer may not be aware of or is unable to exclude the infringement on their own. • The statutory Securities and Futures Investors Protection Centre may initiate a lawsuit in its own name with respect to a securities or futures mat- ter arising from a single cause that is injurious to multiple securities investors or futures traders, after having been so empowered by not less than 20 securities investors or futures traders. In the first scenario, an individual who opts in becomes the plaintiff and thus becomes bound by the judgment. In the latter scenario, the law allows a specific entity to act as a plaintiff on behalf of the entire group with the judgment’s effect extending to all members within the group. In these cases, there is no requirement for a group member to opt in, nor may group members opt out. 3.8 Requirements for Cost Estimate According to the Code of Ethics for Lawyers, the amount or calculation of attorney fees must be clearly communicated to the client at the time of appoint- ment, preferably in writing. In Taiwan, interim applications in civil cases usu- ally involve applications for certain forms of injunc- tive relief such as a provisional seizure, a provisional injunction, or a provisional injunction to maintain the temporary status quo (for more details of these pro- tective measures, please refer to 6. Injunctive Relief ). Additionally, a party may file a request for preservation of evidence to the court before filing its lawsuit, if it is necessary to preserve critical evidence in advance. 4.2 Early Judgment Applications Taiwan law provides two scenarios where the court may make interim decisions in a civil case: • where part of a claim or one of several claims raised in the action is mature for decision, the court may enter an interlocutory judgment; and 4. Pre-Trial Proceedings 4.1 Interim Applications/Motions
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