Courts can serve papers via Facebook

Approval from a High Court judge to serve court papers via social network website Facebook has "opened the floodgate" to court procedures, according to a Wellington lawyer.

In a New Zealand first, Associate Judge David Gendall approved yesterday the serving of court papers through Facebook after the High Court at Wellington was told that a company, Axe Market Garden, had difficulty serving papers to Craig Axe, who is alleged to have taken $241,000 from its account.

The company's lawyer, Daniel Vincent, asked Judge Gendall if he would take the unusual step of approving a secondary service order on Axe via Facebook and email to avoid him frustrating his client's court action. Judge Gendall approved the order.

Wellington lawyer Barbara Buckett said the decision could open the legal floodgates.

"Who would have thought Facebook would become part of the legal process?" she said.

"There is a crossover here when courts start using this as well, because it is not the purpose for which you get a Facebook to be found, to be served.

"It took a long time for the courts to even look at faxes as a substitution for service of documents ... emails took a long time to come on board.

"This is an example of the law, rightly, coming up with modern technology.

"But again, the old concepts of service and rights might be lagging a little bit behind if we don't fully understand the impact of it all."

Ms Buckett said a Facebook account could belong to someone else or could have been created falsely, and so its reliability would need to be looked at.

"It might have downturn for Facebook if people think it's going to be used to be found or traced or hounded."

Mr Vincent said he had been inspired by a court case in Australia in which the Supreme Court in the Australian Capital Territory approved an application in December last year to use Facebook to legally notify a couple they had lost their home after defaulting on a loan.

Facebook now has more than 140 million users worldwide.

It was launched in 2004.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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