December 18, 2008 by Mark Isle
People in large amounts of debt quickly tend to become very good at avoiding phone calls and not opening letters. However, they may soon have to do something a little more challenging – avoid facebook.
The Capital Territory Supreme Court in Australia recently allowed litigators to use the popular social networking site to serve legal papers to an unnamed Australian couple who had proved elusive for some time.
The pair defaulted on a AUS$100,000 dollar home loan and the bank called in the lawyers. Mark McCormack, the lawyer in charge of the case had attempted to contact the elusive debtors numerous times at their house and via email. Finally he asked the permission of the court to serve papers to the couple electronically, using facebook.
The lawyer’s argument was that facebook was entirely fair, legal and proper as it listed their names, birth dates and identified the pair as ‘friends.’ The judge agreed, though he stipulated that papers also be left at their home and delivered to their email address.
This is the first time that facebook has been used for this purpose in Australia and, to the best of our knowledge, the first time that it has been done at all.
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