[First filed: December 13, 2008 @ 11:41]
Perhaps in a move devised to counteract criticism of lax sentencing of our fair Territory’s crims, ACT courts are marking new boundaries in the legal court procedures sphere and serving courts documents via Facebook!
- Today in what appears to be a first in Australia and perhaps the world, Master Harper of the ACT Supreme Court ordered that a default judgement could be served on defendants by notification on Facebook.
A default judgement is given by the court where the defendant does not appear in court to defend the case. Once the plaintiff has been awarded the default judgement by the court, the plaintiff must then locate the defendant and serve the judgement on them.
Usually this is done by way of personal service or the mailing of the judgement to the defendant’s home. However, service can be difficult where the defendant is not easily located.
Courts do allow service by way of email and in the recent Sonny Bill Williams and NRL matter, the court made an order for “substituted service” by allowing certain court documents to be served on Sonny Bill by text message to his mobile phone. But Facebook is a new one.
I wonder how they will precisely be served? Maybe instead of a ‘poke’, it will be a ‘serve’ as in ‘You have been served by Master Harper’ LOL
UPDATED: Since we ran with this on Saturday all the world’s media has jumped aboard. I can’t honestly recall Canberra ever getting so much press.
There’s nothing like a story about Facebook to let journo’s justify their own crackbook habits to their employers.
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