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NY Magistrate: Legal Papers Can Be Served Via Facebook
New submitter Wylde Stile writes with an interesting case that shows just how pervasive social networking connections have become, including in the eyes of the law. A Staten Island, NY family court support magistrate allowed a Noel Biscoch to serve his ex-wife legal papers via Facebook. Biscoch tried to serve his ex-wife Anna Maria Antigua the old-fashioned way — in person and via postal mail — but his ex-wife had moved with no forwarding address. Antigua maintains an active Facebook account, though, and had even liked some photos on the Biscoch's present wife's Facebook page days before the ruling. The magistrate concluded that the ex-wife could be served through Facebook. If this catches on, I bet a lot of people will end up with legally binding notices caught by spam filters or in their Facebook accounts' "Other" folders.
I really should close my fb acct right now.
However, that's not in the cards for today.
... it went into my Other folder! No-one checks that!
... wait, what?
This is just so astoundingly absurd on so many levels I'm at a loss for words.
As long as a proof of delivery can be provided I'm reasonably fine with it.
Essentially my requirement is that Facebook ensures that the person viewing the message is the one it is intended for and that they are held responsible for messages not delivered correctly.
If Facebook then in the future can't uphold the standard needed for delivering certified mail then that possibility should be revoked.
Electronic mail being equated to how our regular mail was functioning. Will be looking forward to email confidentiality as well!
If legal documents can be sent over Facebook, then shouldn't communications on Facebook be regulated under the FCC telecommunications act?
This would include that private messages sent over Facebook may not be inspected by Facebook, and may not be used for targeted ads.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Open up a FB account
Don't use it
Get served legal papers through FB
Get convicted
appeal
get facebook to testify your user account history
prove you didn't get served properly
Get out of jail free?
IANAL and don't know much about legal afairs
...supenoed Facebook for her current address?
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Facebook stopped being something you wanted to be on when your aunts and uncles started making accounts.
Facebook stopped being something you wanted to be on when your boss/employer started checking it.
Facebook stopped being something you wanted to be on when the government started sniffing around it for information about you.
Facebook stopped being something you wanted to be on when judges decided it was a reasonable means to serve legal documents.
Get off facebook... it is only down hill from here.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Facebook sends you to jail.
I served papers on someone by email when I couldn't do it in person. This isn't particularly surprising.
This is, I think, the key line in TFA:
> A Family Court official ruled that Noel Biscocho could use Facebook to serve Anna Maria Antigua because other, more traditional methods to slap her with papers have not worked.
Historically, when the defendant absolutely cannot be reached any other way, the service of last resort was to put a classified ad in the "legal notices" section of the newspaper. In order for a judge to accept that, you had to show that you didn't know where the person lived or worked, and had no reasonable means of finding out. It seems to me that in case like this, delivery via the person's _active_ Facebook account is much better than a classified ad,and may well be the best available method of reaching the person.
IANAL but I always had a deep intrest in law... In my understanding a summons or a subpoena has to be delivered in person by an officer of the court. This is how most Private Investigators make a bulk of their income... By serving ppl that are hard to find with legal notices. It is done person to person to ensure recite.
As far as I know this cannot be done by postal service because it doesn't ensure receipt. And this is written into law. How is it possible that a Facebook msg can forego that? How is reciet legally confirmed? Even if it is a valid serving of legal docs then What about inactive accounts? Or accounts that have been identified incorrectly?
papers can be served via electronic means, the burden of proof is on the service agent to prove service (via read receipt or screenshot showing that the document has been received by the other party - both of which technically possible on facebook).Service by post is possible, for those in doubt about that, but proof of posting is NOT proof of receipt. In that case, only a signature on a notice of service (or a recorded delivery docket) is sufficient.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Could a person then show up in court via Facebook? If a judge actually thinks that the persons account is really that person and only that person that is reading and responding, a appeal to a higher court with some understanding / intelligence is needed.
Passionately Indifferent
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Papers are often served via the US Mail. FCC has no jurisdiction. Papers are often served at "last and usual," jargon for the place where the person is believed to have resided most recently. FCC has no jurisdiction over the front door. Contrary to film noir movies, papers are only occasionally served "in hand" where the process server physically hands the documents to the person of interest. Of course, the FCC has no jurisdiction there either.
In short, the FCC has absolutely nothing to do with this.
Source: I am a process server.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
You made that POS Zuckerberg a billionaire.... shame on you.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
What will the magistrate have to say if the lady chooses to appear in court via Facebook Video?
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That, and make sure their cookies don't get deleted.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
My ex would never go for something like that, she was a fan a paying to have the local Sherif show up at my job serve paperwork, claiming it was the ONLY way, even though every atty I spoke with said a certified letter would have worked just fine.
The gentleman in question was going to court to end the court order requiring him to pay child support payments for his now 21 year old son. It seems to me that a better solution would have been for the judge to issue an order to the provide the address for the account where the child support payments were being deposited. Followed up by an order suspending the payments if the ex-wife was not at that address until such a time as an actual address was found (the logic being that if the address the account was registered at was not at that address, then there was reason to believe that the account was actually being used by someone else). Confirmation of the correct account being found would come in the form of the court papers being served. Further the court could have ruled that the suspended child support payments would only be due if the court found in the ex-wife's favor on the petition which the man had made.
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1) Find someone to sue
2) Open FB account in their name
3) Serve court docs via FB
4) Win case by default when they don't turn up in Court.
What can go wrong?
And fuck being able to actually prove the provenance of any legal document.
first question that comes to my mind is the actual state of the procedings. he is serving his ex-wife and she is liking pictures on his current wifes page.
do these papers do with something on going and the actual divorce has been granted or is he a bigamist?
THIS is the real question.
Why bother typing a long question without even reading the short article? Their son turned 21, father is petitioning the court to end child support payments. The whole thing is routine; the judge made a sensible decision to help move things along.
1) It's the NY Post.
2) It's not new. http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/federal-judge-orders-service-of-process-71001/
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but someone creates an account under your name?
Not to play.
I do not use Facebook, aka "StealMyIdentityAndInfectMyPC.COM" and I never will.
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The judge may have said it can be used in this one case, but unless struck down by another court, it sets up a precedent for other judges to do the same.
The precedent is already there. (Leaving aside issues of which precedent is binding v. persuasive v. nobody cares).
Service by publication--you just put ads in generally available newspapers--is allowed in some courts when you can't reach a person, a leftover from the days when people read newspapers.
A few years ago slashdot posted an article when a judge allowed service by *email*. The reasoning was that an email to the person was more likely to reach them than service by publication, which would have been allowed.
When service by publication would be permissible, most savvy judges are likely to allow service by email, if it is within their discretion to allow it.
Suppose you go into court and there is no representative of the other party. if you can prove the notice was served, you can ask for declaratory judgement. Get FacedBook does not have return receipt functionality, unlike almost all email clients. barring a reply such as "you suck skunks," you can't prove service. this is no better than tying the subpoena to a flaming arrow and shooting it into a tree.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
NOT to use facebook!
Paper serving is not some super serious must be done in person thing. You usually do need to try to have a process server try to serve the papers in person. But when that fails, then it's good enough to just give it to a housemate or relative. If you can't do that, then it can be mailed. If it gets down to it, *the papers can be served just by posting a notice in the newspaper*.
Facebook has 'the message was seen', which is more reliable than a lot of these. If it goes into your spam then it doesn't get marked as read. And it's fairly obvious whether you've been active on your account or not - it's (hopefully) much harder for someone to fake being you on FB for six months without anyone noticing than it is to just register a mail address in your name.
The courts are used to dealing with all manner of tricksy dirtbags, so when they go into hiding mode, the courts go into more aggressive, more error-prone methods. This fits right in there. You can, of course, just lock down your FB account for posting - or use an app that doesn't mark the message as read. But FB users are more likely to be posting public photos of their crimes on FB than to fix their privacy settings.
1) I'm assuming payment was automatic withdrawal. Therefor the bank would have record of her address
2) Proof it was the ex-wife and not someone else posting "like"s. This in an era where some city governments believe they have the right to your logins/passwords to social media.
First, if he's paying her $440/month, there *is* a way to contact her, and the Court has it.
Otherwise, personal service is a sine qua non of rights intended by the Founders. How do you know, she read it? You don't.
The judge may have told the guy to send it via Facebook, but he likely did not assert that it constitutes proper service.
Here in divorce-centric NY, they WILL find ways to serve papers on you. Having a GOOD lawyer who knows state law helps. The judicial system doesn't approve of evaders.
When I filed for divorce in NY (I'll be very brief), my master manipulator STBX evaded the servers. She was an ex-deputy of the Sheriff department and learned of papers through the "old boy network". When she was at home she parked the car at an undisclosed location and no one answered the door. She was known to wear wigs for disguise and they could not find her on campus. All the places and events she was known to frequent, she could not be found.
The judge heard testimony from the servers that they were unable to serve papers on her after six months of trying. My lawyer and the judge had never seen a case this bad. At that time, she told me to contact her through her mother. I had a GOOD lawyer and he cited NY state law that in the event that a family member has been designated a contact, then papers can be served on that family member.
My mother-in-law never even knew we were separated and she went through the roof when she got the papers. Then the very next day her lawyer responds, and this timing of events was used in my trial before a very impressed judge.
Without going into details, the whole episode stretched out years longer than it should had for a simple divorce case and the judge cited her intentional abuse of the legal system in his ruling to prolong the process.
Did it end there? Nooooo.... when I found a buyer for the marital residence she refused to sign the papers, in violation of the stipulation. The same judge, with my divorce case fresh in his memory, wanted that broad in his court in two weeks. She was working at a state camp for the summer and I provided precise directions of the location of this camp for the server. Knowing her tactics, he posed as a delivery person carrying a parcel that required her signature. He delivered the parcel - and the papers. She never expected it, and probably forgot that years ago I wrote down those instructions when she called me out to that camp because her car broke down.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Then you don't have to worry about this.
NY law allows a Judge to use alternate means to serve someone evading service...in this case, it is clear that service was being actively avoided. It was an unusual approach but in this case made sense.
A couple years ago, I got served somebody else's summons. Apparently, there's someone else in the same city with my same first and last name (not the same middle name, though, or even the same middle initial). When that person failed to answer the summons at his residence address, they found *my* workplace address and gave me the summons. The guy they used to give the summons then stated that, no, I was totally the same guy (most likely because he didn't actually go check, because screw that, he had better things to do than his frelling job). So *I* had to get a lawyer to defend myself against the accusation of being a person I wasn't. (Thankfully, my mom knows a lot of people, including at least one lawyer who wanted to help out her son for free, or I would have been spending hundreds of dollars to defend myself in a case I had absolutely nothing to do with. Still tons of fun, though.)
So, given that, I totally support this.