Daning Zhou v. The Individuals, Corporations, Limited Liability Companies, Partnerships and Unincorporated Associations Identified in Schedule A

MINUTE entry before the Honorable Steven C. Seeger: Plaintiff's motion for expedited discovery (Dckt. No. [10]) is hereby granted in part as follows. The Court authorizes expedited discovery the limited purpose of identifying the identities and mailing addresses of the Defendants to effectuate service of process. Plaintiff must file a status report within three weeks of entry of this order. In the meantime, the Court reminds Plaintiff of the governing law about service of process on foreign defendants. The Seventh Circuit recently issued its decision in Kangol LLC v. Hangzhou Chuanyue Silk Import & Export Co., 177 F.4th 793, 797 (7th Cir. 2026). There, the Seventh Circuit held that the Hague Convention prohibits email service in China. But the Seventh Circuit pointed out that the Convention does not apply when the address is unknown, despite diligent efforts to find the address. Article 1 of the Hague Convention states that it "shall apply in cases. where there is occasion to transmit a judicial or extrajudicial document for service abroad," but "shall not apply where the address of the person to be served with the document is not known." Hague Service Convention, Nov. 15, 1965, 20 U.S.T. 361, 362. "District courts handling Schedule A cases typically require plaintiffs to make 'reasonably diligent efforts to ascertain and verify [the] defendant's mailing address' before deeming the defendant's address unknown." See Kangol, 177 F.4th at 799. Plaintiff must comply with Kangol, and must make reasonably diligent efforts to obtain Defendants' addresses and serve them under the Hague Convention. Mailed notice.