[LINK] Canberra Lawyers Serve Reposession Order Via Facebook

[Crispin Harris]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Chris Maltby <chris at sw.oz.au> wrote:
>> http://tinyurl.com/6e37s5
>
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 10:44:50PM +0100, Kim Holburn wrote:
>> There are just things wrong with this.  Like how do you prove it was
>> who you thought?  How do you connect with someone without their
>> allowing you?  Is that hacking?  And of course if you have a facebook
>> account do *use* the privacy settings.
>
> Of course process serving is a fairly inexact business in real life
> as well, and the same general rules apply - if you get served but
> choose to pretend you weren't, then you would have to front court
> to prevent bailiffs doing their job, and the evidence of witnesses
> such as the process server would need to be gainsaid. And then they
> serve you for sure anyway...
>
> I think it's probably legally "reasonable" to assume that the facebook
> ids are associated with the people involved, and thus they might have to
> provide evidence that they weren't served when the bailiffs show up and
> break down the door.

But how do you prove that they received it?

Surely the issue is in the reception, not in the delivery.

I have a facebook account - but I can't tell you when I last logged
into it. I have definitely gone months without logging in, and I know
people who have gone MUCH longer than that.

The next step from here is serving through Blog postings, Instant
Messaging and SocialNetworking tools such as Twitter, Pownce et. al. -
this is dangerous.

Otherwise I could post it to you stating that I "Took reasonable steps
to ensure delivery", after all, AusPost manages to successfully
deliver over 99.99% of correctly addressed mail.

C


-- 
Crispin Harris
crispin.harris at gmail.com
"Well, you know... most Catholics are so boring, you kind of expect
them to be fairly reasonable and not, say, frothing papal fanboys with
the IQ of a turnip. So he had me fooled. Not any more, though."
Thanks to Eric The FruitBat (etfb.livejournal.com)