Appellate Law

Service of Summons via Social Media

By Greg May

Sometimes, a defendant manages to dodge service of summons quite skillfully.  A colleague of mine once resorted to serving a  defendant with summons at the defendant’s daughter’s wedding because the defendant had successfully dodged many prior service attempts.

Now, an Australian court has authorized service of summons by notifying the defendant via Facebook (sidebar note at p. 10 of this PDF).

And why not? If it hasn’t already happened here, it probably will eventually. California law (Code Civ. Proc., § 415.50) already allows for service of summons by publication in newspapers in certain cases when a plaintiff shows that “the party to be served cannot with reasonable diligence be served in another manner specified in this article.” A Facebook posting is probably far more likely to actually reach the defendant than is notice by publication in a newspaper. At least so long as the defendant’s Facebook account has not gone stale.

We now have e-filing and e-service of other papers. Summonses may be the last holdout, but they can’t hold out forever.

Conceivably, service would even be possible via Twitter with a few words and a link to an online post of the summons, though I wouldn’t advocate it. Imagine seeing this tweet on your iPhone:

You’re being sued ? here’s your summons: http://tinyurl. . . .

For the lighter side of social media evolution, watch this.

Hat tip: My dad.

Full post as published by The California Blog of Appeal on April 08, 2009 (boomark / email).