Earlier this month, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could serve a judicial summons to defendants located in India by sending them both emails and Facebook messages. According to an article in the ABA Journal, this ruling is the first of its kind in the United States.
In September 2012, the FTC filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and asked the court to issue an injunction against nine defendants (five of whom were located in India) for allegedly operating a scheme deceiving American consumers into spending money to fix nonexistent computer problems.
The court issued a temporary restraining order (a preliminary step on the road to an injunction) freezing the defendants’ business practices and assets. Subsequently, the FTC submitted the Summons, Complaint, and related documents to the Indian Central Authority, in accordance with the Federal Rules of Procedure 4(f)(1) and the Hague Convention. The FTC also sent these documents to the defendants in three other ways: by email, by Federal Express (“FedEx”), and by personal service via a process server.
Shortly thereafter, the defendants received the documents by FedEx and personal service, but the Indian Central Authority failed to formally serve the defendants. Having received actual notice of the lawsuit, the defendants hired counsel to make an appearance in a preliminary injunction hearing. The court granted the preliminary injunction, continuing most of the terms of the temporary restraining order, except that it unfroze certain assets to allow the defendants to pay attorneys’ fees.
The defendants have not complied with the terms of the preliminary injunction, and that noncompliance has thus led the FTC to file a motion seeking to serve the defendants by both email and Facebook. Since the defendants already received the Summons and Complaint, the motion seeks only to serve them with other documents by the proposed means.
http://verdict.justia.com/2013/03/25/serving-foreign-defendants-via-facebook