Don't log onto Facebook if you've been naughty.
In a world where it seems as though everyone and their dog has a Facebook profile, it seems the social networking site has now become an appropriate channel for serving legal documents if the party in question is otherwise unreachable. One British High Court judge has ruled that legal papers can be served via social networking site Facebook.
The Telegraph reports that the ruling was handing down in a £1.3 million ($2.1 million) case brought by two investment managers (AKO Capital LLP and AKO Master Fund) against their broker, TFS Derivatives, one of its employees (Fabio de Biase), and a man that used to work for AKO Capital named Anjam Ahmad. However, because they are unsure as to whether or not de Biase is living at his last known address, the claim was served via Facebook.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Jenni Jenkins, a lawyer representing one of the parties involved, said the decision to all the claim to be served via Facebook isn't really all that surprising.
"It's a fairly natural progression. A High Court judge has already ruled that an injunction can be served via Twitter, so it's a hop, skip and a jump away from that to allow claims to be served via Facebook," she told the newspaper.
Indeed, this is not the firs time in the UK that a court has given the green light for a legal document to be served via Facebook. Just last year, solicitor Hilary Thorpe was granted permission to serve court summons to a debtor after several failed attempts to contact the person in question through more traditional channels. However, the Telegraph reports that this is the first approval has been awarded at such a high level.
That would be hilarious if it wasn't heading to the USA very soon as well, watch this space
I get that it will only be used as a last resort, but seriously, if I really couldn't be contacted by any other means, contact via Facebook would be impossible.
And injunctions served via Twitter?? Who would take that seriously?! An email, sure, makes a little more sense. But Twitter??
Scenario... you abandon your account and get served in there. Some hacker while snooping around looks into your account; which now has had 'activity'. That means the summons was 'served' without you ever knowing it did.
And the burden of proof that it was not you who logged into the account will prob. be yours.
The same could be said for your telephone line or people breaking into your house, all theoretical arguements will have a practical outcome - such as if you take a photo of yourself with your camera phone then post it on Facebook it's pretty hard to argue in court that you didn't do it and you weren't logged in.
How long will it take people to realize you could be prosecuted for shit that happens on 'facebook', I hope his IPO burns to the ground.
Also i recommend NoScript plugin for firefox - just to give facebook scripts the bird wherever they are.
But seriously, the legal system again shows it's inadequacy in the area of new tech. and not only tech. but practically everything changing and evolving.
It is a legal way to serve people