Interview in Marketwatch on Service by Facebook

Quentin Fottrell of Marketwatch interviewed Omar Ha-Redeye on April 6, 2015 on the use of Facebook to serve court documents,

This is not the first time legal papers have been served over Facebook. Last year, Staten Island Support Magistrate Gregory Gliedman granted Noel Biscocho permission to use Facebook to send his ex-wife, Anna Maria Antigua, a legal notice telling her that he no longer wished to pay $440 a month in child support as his son had turned 21. “We’ve seen a trend toward using social media for the serving of documents,” says Omar Ha-Redeye, attorney with Fleet Street Law in Toronto, Canada. “Courts typically use it as an option of last resort. They will allow service of documents on social media where it’s impossible, impractical or not easy to serve them through registered post or in person.”

Serving papers using social media or citing it as evidence is not without its complications, however. Metadata — the information embedded in photographs — can be manipulated and must be subjected to careful forensic examination, Ha-Redeye says, and it can be difficult to ensure that a social media account is active and/or genuine. In a 2010 case, a federal court found that photos of a defendant from his MySpace page, which showed him holding cash, were relevant in his criminal trial for possession of firearms and drugs, but it withheld ruling on the admissibility of the photos and whether they presented a risk of unfair prejudice, Murphy and Fontecilla’s paper found; that defendant ultimately plead guilty.

courts use facebook