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Transcript:
The title of today's blog is "Facebook message not allowed for proper service of paper according to a judge." What happens when court papers must be served to an individual who is hard to track down? The New York Law Journal reported on June 12, 2012 on the use of Facebook for serving papers that provides notice of a creditor's lawsuit. Chase Bank sued the creditor's mother who had then filed a suit against Chase for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The mother's debts were the results of a bank account fraudulently opened by her daughter, a third party to the case. The judge gave permission to Chase to involve the daughter in the lawsuit due to contribution, indemnification, breach of contract, account stated, fraud and unjust enrichment. The bank was nearly out of luck with these charges because it could not deliver the papers to the daughter. When it is impracticable to delivery papers to a person, there is another option to mail the papers to the last known address and post it on the person's door. However, when these actions cannot happen, the court can, at its discretion, choose another method to serve the papers. The daughter was not found at her four possible addresses, but her Facebook profile listed an email address and a location. The judge claimed the no other court had allowed service by means of Facebook nor would he allow means of service in this particular instance. The reasoning was that the Facebook information or the entire profile might be false given there her own mother, let alone an investigator for Chase, could not track down the debtor. The court said there was little guarantee that the information that the information on Facebook was accurate and that the defendant would receive the notice by means of the Facebook information. Thank you very much.

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