CANBERRA, Australia — A court in Australia has approved the use of Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, to notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan.
The Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court last Friday approved lawyer Mark McCormack’s application to use Facebook to serve the legally binding documents after several failed attempts to contact the couple at the house and by e-mail.
Australian courts have given permission in the past for people to be served via e-mail and text messages when it was not possible to serve them in person.
McCormack, a lawyer for the lender, MKM Capital, said that by the time he got the documents approved by the court late Tuesday for transmission, Facebook profiles for the couple had disappeared from public view.
McCormack said the Facebook attempt would help his client’s case that all reasonable steps had been taken to serve the couple. A court is expected to settle the matter as early as next week.
In a statement, Facebook praised the ruling. “We’re pleased to see the Australian court validate Facebook as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication. The ruling is also an interesting indication of the increasing role that Facebook is playing in people’s lives,” it said.
The documents were sent last Friday after weeks of failed attempts to contact borrowers Gordon Poyser and Carmel Corbo at their Canberra home and by e-mail.
The Associated Press found Poyser, 62, on Tuesday at home at the contested address.
He declined to comment on the record, citing the couple’s stress at the prospect of losing their home of seven years only a week before Christmas. But he said he had privacy restrictions imposed on his Facebook page Tuesday only because of the media attention it had attracted.
“Because (otherwise) I’d get every man and his dog having a look,” Poyser said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
