You may recall a posting on this site from a few weeks ago about an Indiana court that concluded a plaintiff who hadn’t consulted the Internet failed to exercise due diligence in locating a defendant for service of process. A court in West Virginia has taken the centrality of Google in everyday life one step further. The judge in the case of Plemons v. Gale, 2005 WL 1798335, (S.D.W.Va., Jul 27, 2005) equates doing a Google search with the “reasonable person standard.” Here’s an extensive quote from the case:
“In the ‘time, place, and circumstances’ of this case, one who actually wanted to inform Ms. Plemons that her house was to be conveyed because of a failure to pay roughly $3,000 in taxes and fees would not have looked for her in the dusty corners of the Kanawha County record room. In the age of telephones, internet search engines, online newspapers, online people-finders, and readily available credit reports, most people can easily find someone. Thus, if a reasonable person were charged with the duty of locating Ms. Plemons in the relatively small city of Charleston, West Virginia, it is my belief that he would be likely to employ ‘Google’ to find her name, call information to learn her telephone number, contact her lending bank, or call her ex-husband. Instead, Advantage searched the public records for Ms. Plemons’ address and mailed written notices to two of the addresses contained therein. When the notices were found to be undeliverable, Advantage did nothing further. I continue to believe that those efforts failed to meet the constitutional standards of due process.” [Emphasis added.]