Australian first default judgment through Facebook.

Lawyers given permission to serve debtors with default judgement through Facebook | News | News.com.au

TWO friends who defaulted on a six-figure loan are about to find out through their Facebook page a mortgage lender's lawyers are on their trail.

In an Australian and possibly world first, two lawyers have won a court order to allow them to serve a default judgment through Facebook.

After failing to serve the court documents personally, lawyers Mark McCormack and Jason Oliver tracked down the debtors' Facebook page.

They were granted permission in the ACT Supreme Court to serve the default judgment through a Facebook email to the debtors.

"We don't know of any other lawyer who has used Facebook in this way," said Mr McCormack, of Meyer Vandenberg Lawyers.

"We got the idea ourselves in the course of looking at alternative methods of bringing the matter to the defendants' attention.

"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."

Mr McCormack said they had to convince the court that the service of the default judgment by Facebook had a reasonable prospect of success and that other methods of personal service had failed.

"This is really a method of last resort in circumstances where we're unable to effect service personally," 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."

A default judgment is given to someone if they do not appear in court.

It then becomes the responsibility of the plaintiff to personally deliver or mail the document.