• Jurisdiction

    Service of Summons via Social Media

    Sometimes, a defendant manages to dodge service of summons quite skillfully.  A colleague of mine once resorted to serving a  defendant with summons at the defendant’s daughter’s wedding because the defendant had successfully dodged many prior service attempts. Now, an Australian court has authorized service of summons by notifying the defendant via Facebook (sidebar note at p. 10 of this PDF). And why not? If it hasn’t already happened here, it probably will eventually. California law (Code Civ. Proc., § 415.50) already allows for service of summons by publication in newspapers in certain cases when a plaintiff shows that “the party to be served cannot with reasonable diligence be served in another…