Judge Approves Serving Legal Documents Using Facebook
Author: Attorney Daniel Villalobos
A landmark decision has occurred that may change the way lawsuits proceed in the future for personal injury cases. Although the case at issue in this article was not a personal injury case, the decision will open the door for other areas of law. In this case a Staten Island man was responsible to pay $440 a month in child support. He was seeking to terminate his child support obligations under New York law since his son had attained the age of 21. The man was unable to serve the necessary documents to his ex in order to set a hearing to terminate child support. This went on for a while. The ex had moved out of her home and had no forwarding address. The man searched Google and left endless messages and voicemails and never received any response. Although this is only speculation, it is possible the ex purposely refused to accept any service of the documents as a way to inadvertently keep the man paying child support despite the law allowing child support payments to cease. As a result of the man’s inability to serve his ex the legal documents personally, a judge allowed the man to serve the necessary legal documents via Facebook. This means that once she checks her Facebook account and sees the legal documents she is instantly served and the hearing can proceed to terminate child support payments.
Assuming this type of service of process is permitted in personal injury cases this can potentially allow personal injury firms to file lawsuits faster and quicker than before. A big problem that arises in personal injury lawsuits is the law firm cannot locate the defendant in order to file the lawsuit. Often times it could take months if not years to be able to physically serve someone the complaint and notice of the lawsuit. In most states if a person (or an approved registered agent) is not physically served a lawsuit, then the lawsuit cannot begin. The public policy behind this is that it is not fair for someone to be sued without knowing about it. If someone can be sued without knowing they are being sued then they can’t defend themselves and the court could require defendants to pay large sums of money for which they were unaware they had to pay. In order to avoid this result most jurisdictions require the defendant to be actually and physically served the documents. However if courts begin to allow people to be served via social networking websites such as Facebook, this will open the door to a faster and more efficient way to get lawsuits going.
Only time will tell when service of process via social networking websites such as Facebook will be permitted in Florida. Call us for a free consultation. We do not charge a cost or fee unless we recover money for you.
