Judge OKs use of social website to serve legal papers

Status update: You're sued.

A High Court judge in England has approved using Facebook to serve legal claims.

Lawyers in a commercial dispute were last week granted permission to serve a suit against a defendant via the favored social networking site.

Justice Nigel Teare permitted the radical approach to service during a pretrial hearing right into a case which pits two investment managers against a brokerage firm they accuse of overcharging them. A former trader and an ex-broker, Fabio De Biase and Anjam Ahmad, also are supposed to were in at the scam.

Jenni Jenkins, who represents Ahmad, said lawyers within the case were attempting to track De Biase with a purpose to serve him with legal documents. She said a replica of the suit was left at his last known address, but that it wasn't clear whether he was still living there.

The lawyers did not have his email address, so that they applied for permission to send him the claim through Facebook.

Jenkins, an go together with London-based law firm Memery Crystal, said the lawyers were confident that De Biase's account was still active.

"The counsel told the judge that somebody from the firm were monitoring the account and they might seen that he is recently added two new friends, which made the judge chuckle," she said.

Ordinarily, British legal claims are served in hard copy either in person, by mail, or by fax although unconventional means are occasionally employed.

In December, a judge allowed an injunction against London-based protesters from the Occupy movement to be served by text message.

The Judicial Office for England and Wales confirmed yesterday that Teare had allowed lawyers to serve their claim through Facebook. A spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorised to provide her name, said it was the primary time anyone were served via the location "so far as we're aware".

- AP

By Raphael Satter