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Are You Being Served? Don't Open That Email!

Posted by timothy on from the imagine-future-spam-subject-lines dept.

An unnamed reader writes: "A federal appeals court has ruled that legal documents can be served by email. Since the party had no physical address, the court ruled that email was a viable option. So, before you open that next email, you might want to consider if it's something you might want to avoid! And it wouldn't be spam..."

2 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. Registerred Email by ksw2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Until you can confirm the receipt beyond a reasonable doubt, I don't think this will become a widespread practice. How hard is it to forge a bounced message?

    Anyway, undoubtedly if you do have a physical address, it will be used instead. The case mentioned in the article seems to be an isolated one.

  2. Read carefully - "hide-and-seek" comment by Seth+Finkelstein · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "When faced with an international e-business scofflaw playing hide-and-seek with the federal court, e-mail may be the only means of effecting service of process," the court said. "We acknowledge that we tread upon untrodden ground."
    I think the court is NOT saying that it will allow service by e-mail as a routine matter. But in cases where the party is trying to claim to be both available (by e-mail) and NOT available (physically), the court will allow the party's obvious prefered method of being reached :-)

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