Face law on Facebook

Next time you log in to your social networking website - beware - there may be more than you have bargained for in there.

In what is believed to be New Zealand's precedent, a High Court judge approved of serving court papers via Facebook, one of world's most popular networking websites.

On Monday, 22 March 2009 in Wellington, Associate Justice David Glendall allowed for court papers for Craig Axe to be served via Facebook and email.

Craig is being sued by Axe Market Garden for having taken NZ$241,000 from the company's account. The plaintiff is Craig's father, John Axe.

Craig is thought to be living in the UK, but his exact address is not known. However he's been communicating via email and Facebook.

Justice Glendall approved the unusual method of serving the court papers after coming to the conclustion that the traditional methods of serving the notice in local newspapers will not have any chance of success.

This follows a similar Australian precedent where a family was served a court notice after they dafaulted on repayments.

Carmela Rita Corbo and Gordon Kingsley Maxwell Poyser were ordered to pay up after a failed business deal.

In December 2008 the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court approved that court papers can be served via Facebook.

After failed attempts to deliver the court papers at their home in Canberra, solicitors Mark McCormack and Jason Oliver, of Meyer Vandenberg Lawyers, suggested that papers be delivered via defendants Facebook pages. Both defendants were on Facebook, but were only sporadic users of the social networking site.

Facebook owners have welcomed the decision of the Australian court. In their statement they emphasised that they were happy with government organisations perceiving Facebook as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication.

However, both the Australian and the New Zealand's cases open a floodgate of questions and doubts.

Firstly, what if a Facebook account has been created by someone else and it actually has false identity? In most cases, there's no way of proving that an account on a networking site really belongs to the person whose name is associated with it. The actual person may be blissfully unaware of the web networking activity evolving under his or her name.

Another question arises around website reliability and availability: What if a website becomes subject of hacking attacks and is down for extended periods of time?

Also, a simple issue of: "I lost my password, and I couldn't log in to it for weeks". These days most websites have "lost passoword" functionality, but they often also have locking mechanisms on too many login attempts. Once your account is locked it may take days or weeks to get it unlocked.

Nevertheless, using Facebook or email to serve court papers may have a far greater chance of success than posting the documents as newspaper announcements.

While Facebook owners may be happy with the courts' decisions, Facebook users will probably be less amused. After all, this opens yet another intruder gate to their networking circle.

More info:
New Zealand: NZ City: Man served court papers on Facebook

New Zealand: The Dominion Post: Courts can serve papers via Facebook

New Zealand: The New Zealand Herald: NZ court papers can be served via Facebook, judge rules

Australia: The Daily Telegraph: Meet Facebook court order pair