The Young Texas Lawyer

Perhaps as a precursor of things to come in the United States, an Australian couple was served with legal documents via their Facebook accounts after the couple defaulted on a $150,000 mortgage.

The defendants ignored emails from the mortgage providers attorney and failed to appear at an October 3rd court date. They had practically disappeared, except in the world of online social networking. Like over 140 million others, the defendants had Facebooks accounts.

A judge in the Australian Capital Territory’s Supreme Court deemed that the Facebook accounts contained enough personal information about the defendants to establish that it was a sufficient method of service after the couple could not be reached by any other method of service.

It’s only a matter of a time before we see a similar situation in the United States. Afterall, isn’t it more likely that an active Facebook user will check their Facebook account rather than checking the newspaper when service by publication is granted. Afterall, you can track a Facebook message and you can even see when it’s been read by the recepient. As the internet becomes a more valuable method of communication for everyday citizens then we are likely to see similar changes in the law.