The Manhattan Supreme Court recently permitted the plaintiff in divorce proceedings to serve the divorce summons to her husband through a private Facebook message. Justice Matthew Cooper acknowledged that the plaintiff’s request for sole, and NOT supplemental, service through a social media message was a “radical departure” from the judicial standard. In Justice Cooper’s opinion, he wrote, “In this age of technological enlightenment, what is for the moment unorthodox and unusual stands a good chance of sooner or later being accepted and standard, or even outdated and passé.” See Baidoo v. Blood-Dzraku. This decision is considered out of the box because while other judges have allowed service through Facebook messaging, it has typically only been allowed when such service is IN ADDITION to other more standard methods of service. Justice Cooper said that the because the plaintiff had submitted an affidavit vouching that the Facebook account was that of the defendant, her husband, and that she provided exhibits showing prior message exchanges that the couple had on Facebook, this new form of service was perfectly acceptable. You never know what you’ll find in your Facebook inbox.

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