The Irish High Court recently approved as an acceptable form of
'substituted service' the service of a summons by Facebook.
This appears to be the first time an Irish court has permitted
service by social media.
'Substituted service' is an exception to the general
requirement that personal service of pleadings be effected. The
Court may make an order for 'substituted service' where a
plaintiff can show that they were unable to effect personal service
on a party to proceedings.
Though prior to this decision, the potential forms of substituted
service were not exhaustive, registered post was by far the most
common method, while the Court rules also envisaged service by
notice or advertisement. The non-exhaustive nature of these rules
has given the Court the flexibility to develop them in line with
the ever growing phenomenon of social media.
Upon a recent application for substituted service, which was
reported on 4 June 2012, Mr Justice Peart permitted the service of
a court summons by way of social media. Specifically, service was
permitted via private email on the social networking site
Facebook.
In making the ruling, Mr Justice Peart was satisfied that the
defendant was an active Facebook user and that use of the
conventional serving methods would prove ineffective as the home
address, telephone number and email address of the defendant, who
was living outside Ireland, were all unknown.
Despite the existence of similar case law in other jurisdictions
including the UK, Australia and New Zealand, this is the first case
of this nature within Ireland and is an area which will undoubtedly
be developed further in the future.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
