Process Service Via Facebook. Really?
June 05, 2015
In a breakthrough ruling in September of 2014, Staten Island Support Magistrate Gregory Gliedman ordered Noel Biscocho to use Facebook to serve his ex-wife, Anna Maria Antigua, with legal notice that he no longer wanted to pay child support. Traditional methods to locate Antigua had failed.
Biscocho’s ex-wife moved and left no forwarding address. Biscocho was unable to track her down with a Google search, and his son and daughter refused to return his calls. Although Antigua had disappeared, she was still alive and well on social media, so the judge directed Biscocho to serve Antiqua via Facebook.
Jeffrey N. Rosental of The Legal Intelligencer penned a 2011 article titled, “You’ve Been Served — on Facebook?” This was in response to a Minnesota case where Jessica Mpafe was directed by the court to serve husband Clarence Ndjounwou Mpafe on the Internet. The court decided that Internet publication was an acceptable form of service “so long as it followed the same information and timing requirements that would go into a newspaper publication.”
Lisa McManus of LexisNexis Legal Newsroom posted in 2011 about the same case. She, too, wondered how we can be certain that a Facebook account holder is who they say they are. On the other hand, neither service via publication nor publication via social media ensure that the defendant actually receives or reads the publication, and judgement can be entered whether the defendant reads the publication or not.
Australia, Canada, the U.K. and New Zealand use service on Facebook only by court order and only after traditional attempts to locate a defendant have failed. Rosenthal believes that service via Facebook may be the wave of the future. The only catch is whether the Facebook account holder is actually the person you want to serve.
Service via Facebook is a service of last resort. It’s cheaper than a private detective, and if a defendant deletes the information, it usually means they’ve seen the post.
In a 2013 lawsuit, the Federal Trade Commission asked the court for permission to serve a defendant via email and Facebook. The court ruled that email service was consistent with due process, while Facebook notice alone was not. However, there is no guarantee that the creator of an email account is any more honest about who they are than the creator of a Facebook page. Moreover, service via email can easily wind up in the recipient’s junk folder and get tossed before it’s even read. At this point, the court has allowed email and social media service only by court order.
Service by Facebook and email may be the wave of the future, but before we can surf that wave with confidence, there has to be a clearer understanding of how email and social media service can impact the legal process. Eventually, service by publication statute will probably give way to publication on social media.
In the meantime, service via email and Facebook will be tweaked, discussed and dissected from head to toe. Time will tell whether social media service is the wave of the future or just an interesting tool to explore along the way.
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