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..."

Comments

Yucky

[68030]

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?

What format?

[treat]

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?

Re:Enlarge your penis - GUARANTEED!

[darkonc]

This actually raises the point of the interaction between spam and service via email.

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.