Are the English Courts Ready for Service through Facebook?

Abstract

On 16 December 2008, in the case of MKM Capital Property Limited v. Corbo and Poyser, Master Harper of the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court permitted service of a default judgment via the social networking website Facebook. The first part of this article considers the MKM Capital decision and an earlier decision of the Queensland District Court, in which permission to serve via Facebook was refused. In the second part, after providing an outline of the recent amendments to the rules for service of documents contained in Part 6 of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), which came into force on 1 October 2008, this article then goes on to consider whether, on the basis of existing case law and in light of those amendments, the English courts would be likely to permit service of documents through Facebook or another social networking website.