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Court uses Facebook to serve legal document

In a case which highlights the difficulties of keeping a low profile when you have a Facebook account, a court has ordered that the social networking site be used to serve legal documents on an elusive father in a child support dispute.
The federal magistrate who made the order, Stewart Brown, said the Adelaide case was unusual but ”demonstrative of social movements and the currency of the times”.
The man, known as Mr Howard, had a brief relationship with a woman who later gave birth. No father was named on the birth certificate, and when the mother sought an assessment of child support her application was rejected for lack of legal proof of paternity.
The mother’s solicitor repeatedly wrote to Mr Howard asking him to undergo a paternity test, but he moved regularly and there was no reply. Letters sent care of his parents and current girlfriend elicited no reply, and a process server had no success delivering the documents.
But Mr Howard was a regular Facebook user. When Mr Brown was told a private message could be left for Mr Howard on Facebook, he ordered that the documents be served electronically.
In a recently published judgment, delivered in Adelaide, Mr Brown said he was satisfied Mr Howard had been properly served with the documents and inferred Mr Howard wanted no involvement as ”the parentage test can have only one outcome because he is [the child’s] father”.
Mr Howard closed his Facebook profile and MySpace website after the documents were served. But Mr Brown found the mother was entitled to an assessment of child support, payable by Mr Howard.
It is believed to be only the second time in Australia that legal documents have been served via Facebook; a Canberra law firm used it in 2008 to serve notice of a judgment on two borrowers who defaulted on a loan.
Tim Butcher, a senior lecturer at RMIT, said it was an example of creativity in the legal system.
”People are finding new ways to use social media every day,” he said. ”It’s only natural that courts, businesses, government agencies will use these tools to track us down. You have the world at your fingertips – but the flip side is that people can find us as well.”

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/court-uses-facebook-to-serve-paternity-test-order-20100603-x7dc.html

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