[Infowarrior] - Oz couple served with legal documents via Facebook

[Richard Forno]

Australian couple served with legal documents via Facebook
An Australian couple who defaulted on their mortgage have been served  
legally binding court documents via social networking site Facebook.

By Bonnie Malkin in Sydney
Last Updated: 4:16PM GMT 16 Dec 2008

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3793491/Australian-couple-served-with-legal-documents-via-Facebook.html


In what may be a world first, lawyers from Canberra law firm Meyer  
Vandenberg persuaded a judge in the Australian Capital Territory's  
Supreme Court to allow them to serve the documents over the internet  
after repeatedly failing to serve the papers in person.

Lawyer Mark McCormack came up with the Facebook plan after it became  
clear that the couple did not want to be found.

Carmel Rita Corbo and Gordon Poyser had failed to keep up repayments  
on a $150,000 (£44,000) loan they had borrowed from MKM Capital, a  
mortgage provider.

The pair had ignored emails from the law firm and did not attend a  
court appearance on Oct 3. Mr McCormack said the pair had "vanished".

So he looked to Facebook, better known for its tendency to break up  
marriages and ruin careers, for inspiration.

"It's somewhat novel, however we do see it as a valid method of  
bringing the matter to the attention of the defendant," McCormack said.

"It's one of those occasions where you feel most at home with what you  
know and I myself have a Facebook account."

"We don't know of any other lawyer who has used Facebook in this way,"  
he told News Ltd.

"We got the idea ourselves in the course of looking at alternative  
methods of bringing the matter to the defendants' attention."

Mr McCormack insisted there was no other way to find the pair.

"They weren't available at their residence. They no longer worked at  
the place given in some documents as the last place of their  
employment," he said.

"The Facebook profiles showed the defendants' dates of birth, email  
addresses and friend lists – and the co-defendants were friends with  
one another.

"This information was enough to satisfy the court that Facebook was a  
sufficient method of communicating with the defendants."

The court decided Facebook was a legally viable way to communicate.

But, in granting permission to use the social networking site, the  
judge stipulated that the papers be sent via a private email so that  
other people visiting the page could not read their contents.

Courts have previously allowed judgements to be delivered by email,  
but it is not known if Facebook or other social networking sites have  
been used in the same way.

Facebook has more than 140m users worldwide.