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Ending a marriage is never easy, but Kelly Clay reports at ReadWrite that things just got easier as Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper has granted 26-year-old Ellanora Baidoo permission to serve papers to her elusive husband via a Facebook message. Invoking the social network was a last resort. Husband Sena Blood-Dzraku's whereabouts in the real world were unknown. But because he communicated with his estranged wife via phone calls and Facebook, Baidoo knew where to find him online. Justice Cooper says the "advent and ascendency of social media," means sites like Facebook and Twitter are the "next frontier" as "forums through which a summons can be delivered." Previously, if you couldn't find a defendant, you had to leave the notice at a last-known address or publish it in a newspaper, and there was no guarantee the defendant would know about it.
Before Cooper agreed to her using Facebook, Baidoo had to prove the Facebook account belongs to her husband, and that he consistently logs on to the account and would therefore see the summons. Attorney Andrew Spinnell says he has contacted Blood-Dzraku twice on Facebook, but has yet to hear back. If Blood-Dzraku refuses the summons, Spinnell says the judge can move forward with a "divorce by default" for his client. "She's not asking for any money," says Spinnell, "She just wants to move on with her life and get a divorce."
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Thursday April 09 2015, @10:42PM
Service via newspaper is reserved for those cases where you don't know who to notify. (Unknown creditors of a deceased person, unknown heirs, etc.) It is a judicial last resort, and act of desperation.
This is not that.
In this case, they know who the person is. They can find out approximately WHERE the person is via phone records.
Unless FB is now as reliable as a deputy sheriff or process server, and if FB is willing to certify that the person signed in and actually had the message displayed, I just don't see how this flies.
Email is still not widely accepted as a valid service of process method [ibls.com]. With fraudsters sending "Mandatory Court Appearance" spam by the truck load, it is not likely that email will ever become valid.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @11:20PM
Email doesn't have any authentication of the sender. Facebook can provide that for process servers if they wanted to.
(Score: 5, Informative) by hemocyanin on Friday April 10 2015, @02:13AM
Sorry, you are not correct. Service by publication is used for many situations when personal service is not possible on a known person for some reason. The rules differ by state, but here is the statute for Washington:
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=4.28.100 [wa.gov]
You'll notice that it lists many circumstance where you know _who_ the defendant is, but don't know _where_ he or she is.