For perhaps the first time in Internet history, Facebook has served as the conduit for serving legal documents. After repeatedly failing to serve the papers in person, the law firm of Meyer Vandenberg convinced a judge in the Australian Capital Territory’s Supreme Court to allow them to use the popular social network to serve papers related to an unpaid debt.

Mark McCormack, the lawyer who came up with the idea, had this to say: “It’s somewhat novel, however we do see it as a valid method of bringing the matter to the attention of the defendant. It’s one of those occasions where you feel most at home with what you know and I myself have a Facebook account. We don’t know of any other lawyer who has used Facebook in this way, we got the idea ourselves in the course of looking at alternative methods of bringing the matter to the defendants’ attention.”

The couple at the heart of the matter failed to keep up repayments on a $150,000 (£44,000) loan they had borrowed from a mortgage provider. After numerous attempts to reach the couple, both through traditional means and through emails, the law firm was at their wits end when the couple missed a court appearance on Oct 3 of this year.

Frustration bred innovation, and Mr. McCormack had concluded that the couple had altogether vanished. “They weren’t available at their residence. They no longer worked at the place given in some documents as the last place of their employment,” he said. “The Facebook profiles showed the defendants’ dates of birth, email addresses and friend lists – and the co-defendants were friends with one another. This information was enough to satisfy the court that Facebook was a sufficient method of communicating with the defendants.”

McCormack went on to use his lawyer-y skills to try and convince the court that Facebook was an acceptable way to communicate with the couple, and the court agreed with the stipulation that the papers be sent via a private email, not be posted as a status update (You’ve Been Served!). While this is not the first instance of legal documents being officially served through electronic means, courts worldwide have been slow to embrace the idea of service of process through email service. With the Internet continually growing and people moving more of their lives online perhaps this trend will increase. If so, it only raises the question of which social network will become the Internet’s safe house.