It's the latest litigation tactic in the online age: US lawyers are trying to mine the private zones of Facebook and other social-media sites for photos, comments, status updates and other tidbits that might contradict what their opponents are saying in court. And increasingly, judges in civil cases are granting access to online caches that had formerly been considered off-limits.
Defense lawyers in personal-injury cases, in particular, are finding social networks to be a rich source of potentially exculpatory evidence. In one recent case, a New York woman who claimed to be bedridden after falling off a defective chair showed up in family Facebook photos smiling happily in front of her house.
While judges have long allowed information gleaned from public portions of networking sites to be used as evidence in civil trials, materials that are password-protected or reserved for selected "friends" have been given a greater level of protection. But in recent months, two state courts have granted defendants broad access to "private" photos and comments. A federal court issued a similar ruling in 2009.
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Source: indiatimes.com
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1 comments:
This is a very interesting new development. It will be fun to see how courts try to balance the competing interests of privacy, and access to relevant evidence. http://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2011/02/02/smiley-faces-on-facebook-evidence-of-faked-injuries/
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