one to know whether any particular person is the one referred to.”
Nor was there any specific interim relief, such as an injunction, which could be enforced in a way that would bring the proceedings to the unknown person’s attention. The impossibility of service in such a case was, Lord Sumption said, “due not just to the fact that the defendant cannot be found but to the fact that it is not known who the defendant is” (ibid). The alternative service approved by the Court of Appeal – service on the insurer – could not be expected to reach the driver, and would be tantamount to no service at all. Addressing what, if the case had proceeded differently, might have been the heart of the matter, Lord Sumption added that although it might be appropriate to dispense with service if the defendant had concealed his identity in order to evade service, no submission had been made that the court should treat the case as one of evasion of service, and there were no findings which would enable it to do so. 114. We do not question the decision in Cameron. Nor do we question its essential reasoning: that proceedings should be brought to the notice of a person against whom damages are sought (unless, exceptionally, service can be dispensed with), so that he or she has an opportunity to be heard; that service is the means by which that is effected; and that, in circumstances in which service of the amended claim on the substituted defendant would be impossible (even alternative service being tantamount to no service at all), the judge had accordingly been right to refuse permission to amend. 115. That said, with the benefit of the further scrutiny that the point has received on this appeal, we have, with respect, some difficulties with other aspects of Lord Sumption’s analysis. In the first place, we agree that it is generally necessary that a defendant should have such notice of the proceedings as will enable him to be heard before any final relief is ordered. However, there are exceptions to that general rule, as in the case of injunctions granted contra mundum, where there is in reality no defendant in the sense which Lord Sumption had in mind. It is also necessary to bear in mind that it is possible for a person affected by an injunction to be heard after a final order has been made, as was explained at para 40 above. Furthermore, notification, by means of service, and the consequent ability to be heard, is an essentially practical matter. As this court explained in Abela v Baadarani [2013] UKSC 44; [2013] 1 WLR 2043, para 37, service has a number of purposes, but the most important is to ensure that the contents of the document served come to the attention of the defendant. Whether they have done so is a question of fact. If the focus is on whether service can in practice be effected, as we think it should be, then it is unnecessary to carry out the preliminary exercise of classifying cases as falling into either the first or the second of Lord Sumption’s categories.
116. We also have reservations about the theory that it is necessary, in order for service to be effective, that the defendant should be identifiable. For example, Lord
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