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Are You Being Served? Don't Open That Email!
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..."
Guess it's time to get an email address on a non-US server. They can't send a US court jury duty
request to a non-us email address, can they?
An important aspect that has been as of yet unmentioned, is what format were these documents sent in? If they were sent in a proprietary format, is the recipient required by law to purchase software to decode the document?
All they need to do is select "request return receipt" in Microsoft Outlook.
/var/spool/mail/fred without altering it in any way? We'd better make Outlook the law!
And hope that the recipient is also using Outlook and lemmingly click's "yes" when asked if the return receipt can be sent.
What? You say that pine doesn't send return receipts? You say you can read
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
That would be circumstantial evidence at best. The fact that your Web server recorded a request for a given resource -- even a moderately unique one (such as a URL crafted specifically for that email message) -- doesn't prove anything other than a request was made for that resource. There's nothing in your server logs that says the intended recipient opened the email message, or even, for that matter, that the email message was opened at all.
Claimant has a valid trademark dispute
Defendant is not reachable, most likely on purpose
Defendant does have an email address
So you send the mail as a last ditch effort
and then hold a trial in absentia.
How is that not fair?
I can actually understand it in this case, where there wasn't an obvious alternative to email service -- and it actually makes sense in the context of the BC rules of court (which I've read) which allows a judge to OK non-standard methods of service, in a specific case where traditional methods have been proven non-fruitful.
This decision does not appear to approve email service as a general method. It does, however, mean that if you're playing electronic hide-and-seek with someone who is trying to sue you, you may get 'tagged' by email.
Where I worry about it as a general solution is where someone serves me by email with something that looks like spam (or where spammers catch on to email service, and start to use 'service' envelopes to force people to read their stuff (on pain of default judgement if it was a real notice)).
I would then be stuck between the rock of having to read every piece of spam that comes through my mailbox, and the hard place of missing a notice of lawsuit that the RIAA is suing me for $1,000,000 because I had a DECSS link on my web page.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
So the message is HTML, and contains a web bug to track the opening of the mail.
So what if someone has their preview pane turned on. The bug gets triggered, but they are not there.
What happens to the burden of proof in this case? Does it remain with entity doing the serving, or does it fall on the the entity being served?
Blogging because I can...
Now prove it wasn't my 5 year old nephew that accidentally switched over to Outlook while playing "Grover Learns to Read".
But the decision opened the door.
Picture this: the church of Scientology decides to nail you, for whatever reason.
They set up a court case, timing the service of process for some time you are not available, and would be unaware of the matter.
After not finding you in person, they serve up an e-summons to an email account you don't use much. Stipulated in the summons: if you don't respond, you automatically lose your case.
After a set period of time, you are informed that you have lost your house, your car, and maybe even your job, depending on many fake charges they managed to pile on you, because the judge automatically ruled you guilty of whatever BS they thought up.
My family, long ago, lost a civil case because the bailiff mispronounced our last name so badly that we didn't approach the judge. The plaintiff, although he knew we were there, swifty told the judge we were absent, and we lost the case by default.
Wonderful, ain't it?
$12 if done by the govmn't (but I suspect that this is for simpler cases)
Otherwise, $50 to a couple hundred dollars depending on the difficulty of the case (at $50/hr surveillance!).
A friend of mine helped out a guy who was getting screwed for child support payments. Basically, his ex-wife was living off of the child support payments (and I think remarried) and not giving a dime to her at-college kids. So, he paid the kids directly, too. To get his payments re-evaluated, he needed to serve his ex-wife with papers. He wasn't allowed to do it himself... he needed a third party to do it. He hired a firm to do it, and they did... but she kept lying under oath that she never received the papers and the judge kept letting her delay. Why the judge didn't witness the supoena right there in court, I don't know. Anyway, after many attempts, the ex-husband was running out of money. My friend agreed to do the delivery. They knew where she went to church, dressed up in thier sunday best, and followed her. Aparently the rule they had to follow was that the documents had to touch her person -- leaving at her doorstep wasn't good enough. And this lady was smart (dumb?) enough to literally run away everytime she thought she was going to be subpoened. But, she didn't know my friend, and when they handed her the package in the middle of the church (a huge cathederal, and just after the service), her shriek echoed through the building. She tossed it up in the air and ran out. As paritioners filed out, they had to step around the package on the floor- with her full name in big red letters. Plenty of witnesses, hopefully. A videocamera would have been more effective, but this was back in the day when they were bigger. It's amazing what denial some people can get into thinking they can avoid subpoenas...
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
First, I want to say I like your sig.
Second, in Oklahoma, the police were always contacting people to say they had won a prize and they were to meet at the Myriad Arena on a certain day/time. At the announced time, they'd get up on the podium and call out a few names, sending those people (the innocents thrown into the mix) into another room where they could claim televisions and such. The rest of the people in the room were then arrested. This is a good method of picking up warrants, or so I'm told. Why not do something similar for serving people?
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.