Plaintiffs Score a Pair of Wins in Social Media Decisions

http://ow.ly/86P8B

An article by Ben Present posted on law.com on the Legal Intelligencer journal.

This article discusses two recent cases where the court did not compel the production of evidence from Facebook, since the evidence sought was not posted on an individual's public page.

The article mentions two Pennsylvania based cases and states, "In one of the cases, a Franklin County judge denied an auto-accident defendant's motion asking for access to the plaintiff's social media pages because the request did not stem from information found on the plaintiff's public profile. It appears to be the first decision in this state to deal with social media discovery in which the defendant could not point to content available for anyone to see.

In the other case, a Luzerne County judge denied a defendant insurance company's request to gain access to its opponent's private Facebook and Myspace pages, but ordered the plaintiff not to delete the websites or any of the content on them."

The two cases mentioned were: Arcq v. Fields; and Kalinowski v. Kirschenheiter.  The Arcq case was held to differ from the case "Largent v. Reed , which came down last month, the defendant established a good-faith basis for requesting access to the plaintiff's private Facebook page because of information available on the public page."

The article goes on to further state, "While there is no appellate precedent to guide lower courts on discoverability of information on Facebook, there is a growing body of trial court decisions. Kalinowski and Arcq offer plaintiffs lawyers two more decisions to cite, joining Piccolo v. Paterson , a Bucks County decision from earlier this year.

For the defense bar, the go-to decisions remain Zimmerman v. Weis Markets Inc. and McMillen v. Hummingbird Speedway Inc . Those cases, along with Largent , will continue to be cited by defendants seeking discovery."