by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher)
On Monday, the Daily News reported on a "landmark" ruling by a Manhattan judge allowing a woman to serve her "elusive husband" with divorce papers via Facebook. The judge order that the divorce papers must be sent to the husband over Facebook "once a week for three consecutive weeks or until acknowledged." According to the article, the husband kept in touch with his wife by phone and through Facebook, but that he had no fixed address and refused to make himself available to be served. After all other conventional methods of service failed — he vacated his last known address in 2011, he had no job, the post office had no forwarding address for him, there was no billing address linked to his prepaid cell phone, and the DMV had no record of him — the judge allowed service through Facebook.
While interesting, this is not actually a landmark decision. Less than one year ago, a Staten Island judge permitted service via Facebook in a similar case. (Obviously, since this took place in my ancestral home, it went unnoticed — the latest proof that Staten Island truly is the "forgotten borough.") In that case, also involving a domestic dispute, a man was allowed to serve his ex-wife with "legal notice that he [did not] want to pay any more child support" via Facebook after more conventional methods of service failed. The man's ex-wife had moved from her last known address and did not provide any forwarding information to the post office. However, she maintained "an active social media account with Facebook," therefore the judge allowed her to be served through that Facebook account.
In addition, several federal courts have also addressed this issue. For example, in one case, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York held that service via Facebook might not, on its own, comport with due process, but it was acceptable as a supplemental method in conjunction with other, more conventional, methods of service. In a different case, a different judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York refused to authorize service via Facebook where the plaintiff could not demonstrate that the Facebook profile that the plaintiff proposed to use for service was in fact maintained by the defendant or that the email address listed on the Facebook profile was accessed by the defendant. Although these cases are among the few to have considered the issue, they appear to describe the approach courts are likely to take when faced with a request to permit service via Facebook — if all other methods are exhausted, or service via Facebook is one of several methods to be employed, and if there is some showing that the individual to be served actually maintains and accesses the Facebook account, then service via Facebook would probably be acceptable.
Pete's Take 