New York Court Denies Chase Bank’s Request to Serve Alleged Credit Card Scammer on Facebook

A New York district judge denied Chase Bank USA’s Motion to serve a defendant via Facebook this week. Chase had attempted to serve the woman numerous times through physical addresses that it had tracked down for her but was unsuccessful.  So naturally, Chase wanted to take it to the next level and serve her through Facebook. The Judge would not allow the service (which was theoretically possible under New York’s laws regarding service of process) because Chase had not made a sufficient showing that she was likely to receive and read the material if service was made in that manner. So, as a practice pointer, if one needs to serve a defendant via Facebook, the lawyer should monitor the proposed Facebook account to see how often the defendant appears to post to his or her page, what sort of information is being posted, i.e., real wall posts or replies by the defendant as opposed to  unanswered posts by the defendant’s “friends” or random applications, and whether the page’s owner is indeed the right person. Based on the reasoning of the New York district judge, this is the sort of evidence that would be necessary to obtain permission to serve process in such an unorthadox manner. So, do you think you could serve a wily defendant through Twitter? Pinterest? Instagram? It will be interesting to see where the law goes in this area and will likely be harder for the tech-saavy defendant with an on-line presence to avoid service  in the future.