Friends or enemies of Facebook? you have been served

Social networking sites are not unknown to the legal and investigative worlds. A lawyer, whether acting as a defense attorney or working for the prosecution, would be handed over without doing some basic social media searches, and a private investigator might well find the key to the case somewhere on Facebook or Twitter. A little digging might reveal that someone on the other side has been up to no good.#

However, the use of Facebook officially authorized by the judicial system is quite recent. Australia was the first, back in 2008, to allow a Facebook message as an alternative means of serving court documents, in this case a foreclosure notice. Since then, the practice has become more widespread in Australia and New Zealand, with Canada joining in 2011, the High Court in England allowing it in February 2012, and just weeks ago a state court in New York authorized a parent to deliver child support documents to his ex-wife through a Facebook message.

It is quite logical: people who receive legal documents of any kind generally do not want to be found. They have often fled from known previous addresses and have taken various steps to stay under the official radar, likely changing phone numbers and email addresses. This can make all traditional forms of service virtually impossible. In this age dominated by social networks, Facebook seems like a viable alternative. Everyone knows a lot of people who can’t seem to be reached outside of Facebook, but are easy to find (and find out a lot about!) on Facebook.

However, there are a few things that the legal world needs to be aware of. The court must be satisfied that traditional document service has been tried and failed and that the Facebook account belongs to the right person and is still used regularly. Furthermore, all of this must be determined within the legal code of ethics that would prohibit the so-called predatory friendship. An investigator cannot simply send a friend request to the man who defaulted on his mortgage to ensure that he continues to receive messages that way.

The use of Facebook messages in such cases has often brought the cases to a legal resolution, a good result, no doubt. In a little twist, Facebook is very happy about it too! Where one might expect the company to want to avoid negative associations, when company spokespeople spoke about it, they expressed satisfaction that the courts have validated the safety of Facebook’s internal messaging feature.

Who knows, it could lead to a new line of business for the social networking site! There is already a growing link between Facebook use and divorce, and there are many Facebook pages, like this one, that offer free access to divorce papers and tools for filing them. From start to finish, from cause to resolution, Facebook, like Google before it, can be everywhere. With an estimated 1.317 billion Facebook users, there are plenty of potential players in the Facebook legal drama.