Australian lawyer serves papers via Facebook

[mawilson 2,133]

An Australian court has allowed a solicitor to use Facebook to serve legal documents

on a couple who defaulted on a housing loan in what the social networking site believes

is the first case of its kind.

Mark McCormack, a Canberra solicitor – and keen Facebook user – who is acting on

behalf of the lender, said the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court had allowed

him to serve the papers after more conventional attempts to leave documents at the

couple’s last known address had failed.

Australian courts have previously allowed judgments to be delivered via e-mail, while

a rugby league star who walked out early on his contract with a Sydney club to play

for Toulon this year was notified of proceedings via SMS text message.

However, Facebook said the use of the networking site in the Australian case was

thought to be the first of its kind.

Mr McCormack said using Facebook to contact people who had fled was a logical next

step for solicitors and it had been easy to track down the couple.

"In their loan application document, they provided an e-mail address. We typed the

address of one of them into the Facebook search engine and it came back with only

one Facebook profile matching that address.

"We then entered that profile and some of the information on it matched the information

in the loan application," he said. This included their names, dates of birth and listing

each other as "friends", which also persuaded the court the right people had been found.

Facebook, whose 140m active users make it the world’s most popular social networking

site, said users could adjust optional privacy settings to prevent anyone from outside

their personal network contacting them, a move that would close off a legal manoeuvre

such as Mr McCormack’s.

Users can also choose to keep their existence on Facebook secret from internet search

engines, though that would not stop someone who is already a member on Facebook

from searching for them on the site.

Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said the case was "an interesting indication

of the increasing role that Facebook is playing in people’s lives".

"We’re pleased to see the Australian court validate Facebook as a reliable, secure and

private medium for communication," Mr Kelly said.

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[Amby 490]

I almost posted this but assumed someone else had...just found it

[Scott & Lai 12]

I'll have to bring this one up at the law office next week