You Got Served! On Facebook?

Some lawyers in Australia somehow got a judge to agree to let process servers notify some deadbeats via Facebook that they were being sued.  I thought the whole point of process servicing is to verify that the recipients actually received the documents.  How can posting something on a webpage be the equivalent of a personal delivery?

From the Telegraph here:

In what may be a world first, lawyers  persuaded a judge in the Australian Capital Territory’s Supreme Court to allow them to serve the documents over the internet after repeatedly failing to serve the papers in person.

Lawyer Mark McCormack came up with the Facebook plan after it became clear that the couple did not want to be found.  Carmel Rita Corbo and Gordon Poyser had failed to keep up repayments on a $150,000 (£44,000) loan they had borrowed from MKM Capital, a mortgage provider.

The pair had ignored emails from the law firm and did not attend a court appearance on Oct 3. Mr McCormack said the pair had “vanished”.

So he looked to Facebook.  “The Facebook profiles showed the defendants’ dates of birth, email addresses and friend lists – and the co-defendants were friends with one another.  This information was enough to satisfy the court that Facebook was a sufficient method of communicating with the defendants.”

The court decided Facebook was a legally viable way to communicate.

But, in granting permission to use the social networking site, the judge stipulated that the papers be sent via a private email so that other people visiting the page could not read their contents.

Courts have previously allowed judgements to be delivered by email, but it is not known if Facebook or other social networking sites have been used in the same way.

I know I have a few regular readers in the legal field.  And sure, the laws in the US are different from Australia-  but how can the courts be satisfied that someone has received notice of legal action by an internet post?