The late novelist Norman Mailer once said that he would know we were on the verge of the apocalypse when, “they played MUZAK in electric chairs.” While possibly not rising to the level of the end of the world as we know it, Yahoo News posted a story by Associated Press (News - Alert) reporter Raphael Satter, saying that a High Court Judge in England approved the use of Facebook to serve a legal claim.

The particulars of Justice Nigel Teare’s decision came out in the pre-trial hearing of a dispute between two investment managers who said a brokerage firm had overcharged them. To make a long story short, the hard copy of the suit was delivered to the last known physical address of one of the accused in the case with no response. Lacking an e-mail address, the lawyers for the aggrieved party asked permission to serve notice via the accused’s Facebook (News - Alert) account, which they believed was active since he had recently added new friends, and Justice Teare gave them permission to do so. He did give the party extra time to respond since it was not clear how often he monitored his Facebook account.

As the posting notes, this is not the first time the English legal system has unused technology to “get their man.” In December of last year a British Judge made headlines for filing an injunction against London-based protesters from the Occupy movement via text messaging. All of this gives credence to a world where “find me, follow me and bill me,” now has a fourth component, i.e., “sue me.” One can only presume that the next use of mobile technology and things like presence and location (GPS) will be if the target does not comply, “catch me and jail me.”

This is being touted as the first time anyone has been served using Facebook, which justifiably did not comment on the story. One thing we can be sure of is that it will not be the last. 

The disturbing part is that this breaks hundreds of years of tradition about the need for physical service. Given the ease at which false identities can be created on social media sites, phones lost or taken, identities and contacts stolen the lack of physical verification seems troubling. There is, after all, seemingly no limit that bad actors will go to create mischief and destroy reputations. Hopefully, this does not open up a Pandora (News - Alert) ’s Box of cyber bullying, and flood the courts with maleficent activities. Maybe time to crank up the MUZAK, or for the more digitally agile, favorite Pandora playlist.