Pictured above: Dominic Hopkins
A leading Northampton litigation lawyer has described the first
recorded case of a court summons being served using Facebook as a
'fascinating development'.
Dominic Hopkins, a commercial litigation partner at Hewitsons
and head of the firm's corporate services, said he welcomed the
court's willingness to embrace social media in appropriate
cases.
"It is important that the courts do look at the new ways in
which people are communicating using technology," he said. "Court
rules have recognised the use of email by those conducting
litigation for some time but this is clearly another step."
Solicitor Hilary Thorpe turned to Facebook after she found it
difficult to encourage a debtor to attend court for an examination
of their means. She remembered hearing of a case in Australia, in
which the Supreme Court gave permission for the website to be
used.
The summons was sent in the form of a private message to the
person's inbox and no one else on Facebook would have been able to
access the document.
Hopkins was quick to strike a note of caution however, and said
that the Courts should be slow to use a social networking site as a
routine method for serving formal court documents. It should only
be used as a last resort and there needs to be considerable caution
exercised to ensure that privacy and confidentiality are respected,
he said.
"It is also important to remember that a named account on one of
these sites may not have been established by that person, so
identification of the individual may not be straightforward," said
Hopkins.
"And, if the reason for using the site is as a method for
bringing formal proceedings to someone's notice, you need to be
confident that the account is active. Many who establish a social
media account, whether on Facebook or one of the other sites, still
do not access it frequently or at all.
"Therefore, I would expect the occasions when using a social
network for this kind of purpose will be rare. I certainly don't
see this case dramatically changing the landscape of established
means for serving documents, at least not yet."