legal notices and email
Attorneys from a Las Vegas Casino wanted to pursue a trademark infringment case against an off shore casino. They only had one problem. How do they serve the offshore casino when they had a valid email address, but all of their other address information was wrong? A federal appeals court ok'ed the use of email to send legal notices in this instance:

This week, an appeals panel affirmed a lower court's decision to allow the Las Vegas casino to serve the offshore casino electronically after attempts to reach it via traditional methods failed.

"When faced with an international e-business scofflaw playing hide-and-seek with the federal court, e-mail may be the only means of effecting service of process," the court said. The judges also pointed out that the offshore casino had gone so far as to set up a business that only accepts e-mail correspondence.

While this ruling probably won't have law offices filing service of process electronically on a regular basis, it's interesting to see a court recognize that email can fulfill such a role in certain circumstances.