Could you get served via Twitter?

Now that a New Zealand judge has allowed court papers to be served via Facebook, the question on the nation’s lips must be: could you be served via a tweet? NBR put the prospect to Chapman Tripp senior solicitor Justin Graham.

Yesterday in the High Court, associate Judge David Gendall approved the serving of a court order via Facebook to one Craig Axe, currently in the UK, who is alleged to have absconded with $241,000 from his father’s business, Axe Market Garden.

Judge Glendall’s decision followed a similar move by an Australian judge in December, which saw a mortgage-defaulting couple notified via Facebook that they had lost their home.

Where will it end? With defendants being served with court orders via Twitter? (The suddenly wildly popular mobile blogging service, actually used via a PC by most Kiwis, since the US-based Twitter doesn't pay for updates via SMS outuside North America).

Chapman Tripp senior solicitor Justin Graham says “anything’s possible now that someone’s been served by Facebook.”

Mr Graham says the normal convention is for papers to be served face-to-face, after a defendant has been identified.

But if a defendant is actively avoiding getting served, then a judge can allow a “substituted service,” as happened in the case of Mr Axe, squirreled away in the UK.

Traditionally, a substituted service took the form of a classified ad in a local paper.

But recently, courts have also allowed a person’s last known email address to be used and, now, social networking site Facebook.

Mr Graham says if a lawyer could satisfy a judge that an AWOL defendant was likely to look at a tweet (a message sent from one Twitter user to others) then the microblogging service could easily be used instead of Facebook –however, it would likely be in conjunction with papers also being served via snail mail and email as well, plus a conventional newspaper ad.

“It comes down to a generational thing,” says Mr Graham. “If you can swear an affidavit that the defendant is likely to check their site every 30 minutes – rather than every six months,” then Twitter could be a go.

Even if the defendant does not reply, the tweet could be deemed an effective service, and a judgement entered against the defendant by default.

However, there is also a flip side to the new technology. Mr Graham says if, in the Facebook case, Mr Axe jr objected to being served via Facebook, it would be likely that the court would look favourably on his objection, given the novelty of the medium at this point, and set the judgement aside.