(cnn)recently, a new york judge issued an opinion authorizing service of divorce papers on a husband completely via facebook what exactly is 'service of process'? serving people with legal papers is an industry and its own body of law premised on one guiding principle: if you are going to sue someone, you should at least let them know about it sounds simple, right?  in theory it is  in practice, it turns out people don't like being sued  it also turns out that, to many defendants, procrastination of a lawsuit is a viable defense just as you may avoid bad news in life, defendants tend to avoid process servers  once a defendant has been served, that means the judicial proceedings begin  unfortunately, that means defendants have an incentive to go 'off the grid' although every state is different, the law of service of process has evolved this way: the ideal and fairest way to notify a person of a lawsuit is to have another human hand the papers to the defendant in person, and have some proof that the person was the defendant in person service is not always possible, for obvious reasons  so, the law had to develop methods of alternate service, but carefully balance a defendant's right to have notice of a lawsuit, against a diligent plaintiff's access to court if a defendant is avoiding the inevitable as reliable as the us mail is, regular mail is not a reliable form of serving papers  not because the postmen can't be trusted; they can neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, will keep them from delivering those papers  instead, it's defendants    no wait, all of humanity    that can't be trusted  every one of us has ignored mail or even pretended we didn't get it  defendants are no different one form of alternate service is 'nail and mail' service  this means that you take a hammer and nail, and nail the papers to the defendant's front door  the problem with that is that many defendants are nomadic by nature  just because you find a house that a defendant stayed at, doesn't mean he'll be back there anytime soon another, even odder form of 'service' is service by publication  this is an almost laughable legal fiction  if you can't find a defendant, a judge might let you serve by publication  that means that a plaintiff can take out an ad in five point font for a week in an obscure publication, on the off chance you are reading the classified ads of the secaucus law journal looking for lawsuits against you  as laughable as serving someone by tweeting it sounds, it's at least more rational than this antiquated method at first blush, the idea of service by facebook seems to offend traditional notions of ensuring notification of a defendant of a case against him  when it comes to serving papers, however, 'traditional' doesn't necessarily mean 'good'  service by publication or nailing paper to the door of an empty apartment is hardly reliable; it's just service of last resort for those people who are concerned that being served papers will become a facebook announcement in a news feed, along with the photos of dinner or kittens, to be 'liked' by all your gawking 'friends,' we're not quite there  yet while the older forms of alternate service were public, most electronic service takes the form of email  where email isn't available, it is facebook private messaging, which should be as private as email  that's the form of service authorized by the court here  so for now, we're not quite putting lawsuits on instagram  but i wouldn't rule it out in the future online service may be a new frontier, but it's not unheard of most of us exist more online now than we 'live' in a particular condo, or mom's basement virtually everyone has a phone or access to the internet  not everyone has a lease or a mortgage  plus, online service has the added benefit of tracking  believe me, somewhere, some computer has already logged the fact that you read this article, how long you read it, and even how far down you scrolled before you got bored and bailed on the article (thanks for still being here, by the way)  in a way, maybe online service is long overdue  you can outrun a process server for a while, but sooner or later, all of us have to go back online    and no human can outrun an email
facebook danny cevallos
a court allowed a wife to serve divorce papers via facebook . danny cevallos: why not let people be found via social media?