Janet CollinsThe Law Catches up to Facebook
December 16th 2008 05:49
You can run but you can’t hide If you’re on Facebook as two loan defaulters found out today.
In what appears to be a landmark decision in Australia and possibly the world, the ACT Supreme Court has given lawyers the right to serve a two default judgements by posting it on the defendants’ Facebook sites.
The defendants had failed to maintain the repayments on a $150,000 loan they borrowed to refinance the mortgage on their home.
A default judgement is given by a court when a defendant fails to appear in court to defend the case. The default judgement is then usually served by personal delivery or mail to the defendant’s home. In this case the lawyers were unable to locate the defendants, even with the assistance of private investigators.
So the search on Facebook began and the lawyers were able to locate and identify the two defendants. Their profiles on Facebook including dates of birth, email addresses and friend lists and the fact that the co-defendants were friends with one another on the site was enough to satisfy the court of their real identity.
There being no other means of locating the pair, the court granted it valid that the defendants be served the legally binding papers by computer to their Facebook pages.
Information source:
The Sydney Morning Herald
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Yes, very interesting, I think a lot of people will be removing themselves from Facebook in the future.
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Believe it or not, I think it was the lawyers for the plaintiff who thought of the idea and then began searching.
I think they had tried to locate them for some weeks and according to reports had even put notices in newspapers.
This will almost put private investigators out of work if it is this easy to locate someone I suspect.