High Court permits service by webpage

Added: (Thu Apr 22 2010)

Pressbox (Press Release) - SUMMARY
Although the High Court has been making in-roads into service by e-mail, and recently permitted notice by Twitter, it has finally accepted the inevitability of the digital age.
In a recent telecoms case involving millions of pounds of claims, Master Eyres of the Queens Bench Division has permitted service by e-mail or any other means. This means that any electronic means could be used to serve the pleadings including url (website) links in SMS.
Court documents have been served by conventional e-mail, twitter etc but this order allows service by website links posted in social network sites such as Facebook, Linked-in, etc as well as SMS or Instant Messaging.

FULL STORY
SERVICE BY ANY ELECTRONIC MEANS
Avoiding legal service in the electronic age would appear to be getting easier according to many lawyers, simply because everyone relies upon electronic communication and there is less focus on conventional physical addresses so even if people move, they don’t lose connection to their electronic environment and may therefore forget to update physical addresses. Not so according to the High Court.

In a pre-digital age, communication was predicated on address and possibly fax. In 1994, the High Court recognised the future impact of the internet and permitted the first ever service by e-mail on a recalcitrant defendant in a defamation case who was hiding behind an on-line persona but could not otherwise be identified.

In November 2009, the High Court allowed service of legal proceedings by Twitter, further recognising the utility of the first forms of electronic service.
In the development of what may be the final step in the High Court’s armoury, Master Eyres had to consider the question of service on parties connected with a failing telecoms group based partly in the Isle of Man and partly in England, two of whom appeared to be avoiding service of counterclaim proceedings claiming millions of pounds and which counterclaim made very serious fraud allegations.

The High Court decided that it was in the interests of all parties that service came to the attention of all the Defendants to the Counterclaim. Letters to addresses listed at the UK companies house and the Isle of Man companies registry were being returned as “unknown address”. Known e-mail links for some of the parties at the telecoms group’s e-mail servers were doubtful as the telecoms group had entered administration and it was impossible to determine whether the e-mail address was valid or whether it was simply being diverted to a catch-all e-mail account.

DL Legal, who were consultants to the counterclaiming party, suggested applying for an order to permit service and notification of documents by any electronic means.

Solicitor-partner Nick Lockett of DL Legal, said “We’ve been quietly working on removal of barriers to electronic service for a number of years and this is a really important step. It takes away all barrier to service in the electronic age. It will make it far easier to obtain protection of online media via service of infringement proceedings”.

In a recent case also involving the Claimant, service by e-mail was deemed invalid when the party claimed only to be able to receive e-mail by Blackberry which truncated the e-mail so service was ineffective.

In a far-sighted step, Master Eyres took the view that in today’s electronic age, the High Court was able to permit service and notification of documents by e-mail or any other means.

Likely to be known as an AnyMeans order, this means that Court documents in the case are being served by conventional e-mail, but are now also able to be served by links posted in social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, SMS and Instant Message (IM). In short, if you can give notice of the proceedings electronically, it is now permitted.
SMS:
By Order of the High Court of England and Wales, service of
documents is hereby made via these links
http://ta.gg/496
http://bit.ly/HighCourt or
http://www.cloud9telecoms.com
Even if you choose to ignore this message, service is deemed effective.

Short web-addresses such as ta.gg or bit.ly or tinyurl take the reader to the website on which the Court pleadings are available. Although this seems particularly simple, the evidential standards mean that you need to take a number of steps in order to prove the effectiveness of the electronic service.

“Service via website avoids arguments of truncation or inaccessibility. You can serve the link by e-mail or SMS without risk of truncation. As people move increasingly to smartphones, they can still access the documents served via web-browser. As pleadings are now deemed public documents, this step may lead to publication on the internet of all pleadings, in a similar fashion to the USA.I can forsee future service of court-based weblinks incorporating the case number, such as www.courtservice.gov.uk/HQ09X02025“ says Lockett of DLLegal.