Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Tell me about it. I gave up on having a phone, fax, email, and legally registered postal address a long time ago. I was using Facebook until now as the only means of my communication but now that I may actually get a legal letter through it I guess I better stop using that too.
God forbid the courts rule you can serve someone via a Slashdot reply, if that happens I'll never be able to communicate with anyone again.
It's on a computer .
It's not "messaging"; it's not "communication"; it's cybercommunication. We need a whole new legal system with whole new cybercourts just to deal with this.
(I refuse to use the </sarcasm> tag.)