This New Jersey Law Journal article recaps an interesting case that raises the question: should MySpace and Facebook postings be subject to discovery demands in litigation much the way emails are today? A teenager is suing her local school board for emotional distress damages stemming from a sexual assault that she maintains her middle school could have prevented.
At issue in the case is whether and to what degree the teen has been distressed. Long story short, the defendants want access to her MySpace and Facebook postings to confirm suspicions they have that she might not have experienced the degree of distress she claims she did. They argue that communicating via social networking sites is akin to communicating via email, and therefore subject to discovery.
But, attorneys for the girl have argued that privacy rights trump discovery requests; social networking sites aren’t email, they contend. The judge wisely decided that the defendants had not yet done enough investigation to justify that the plaintiff turn over her postings.
When all is said and done, however, this case, and presumably other cases like it, may very well end up making private postings on social networking sites subject to discovery. Teens today rarely use email, opting to communicate via social networking (or IM, which is also subject to discovery), making social networking posts the effective equivalent of email. As Mike Masnick at TechDirt points out, it’s going to be hard for anybody to argue otherwise.
Cynthia Brumfield at 10:50 AM|Comments(0)
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