Between growing flowers, petitions and superpokes, you can safely ignore a fair proportion of messages you receive on Facebook. But an Australian court’s ruling means the country’s citizens may find their inbox contains legal papers.

A Canberra lawyer for a mortgage firm persuaded a court to allow him to serve a repossession notice through an attachment on a Facebook e-mail. The borrowers, Gordon Poyser and Carmel Corbo, had failed to respond to traditional e-mails and postal letters and had not been home when the firm attempted to serve the papers in person.

Without evidence the couple had received the paper, the foreclosure procedure would have been legally stalled. The court agreed with lawyer Mark McCormack’s argument that he could prove a particular account belonged to Corbo. The date of birth and associated e-mail address both matched and she had listed Poyser as a Facebook friend.

The court did put some restrictions on the procedure: McCormack was only permitted to send the papers through a private message rather than posting it on a publicly visible area such as Corbo’s ‘wall’.

Most media reports of the case suggest the couple were actually served through Facebook. In reality, by the time McCormack had got the court ruling, the couple had both altered their privacy settings, making it impossible to send the message.

Poyser told the Associated Press this was simply a response to media interest. However, McCormack may be able to argue that the Facebook tactic is further proof that the firm has made all reasonable attempts to serve the papers, which would enhance its standing in future legal action.

It appears to be the first time a court has approved serving papers in this way. Another Australian court turned down a similar request in April because the lawyers concerned hadn’t tried all possible options through the postal service.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 3:44 pm under Legal, Social Media.

Read more entries by John Lister.
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