Evan Brown writes:
Keller v. National Farmers Union Property & Cas. Co., 2013 WL 27731 (D. Mont. January 2, 2013)
A federal court in Montana has held that a plaintiff in an insurance dispute was protected from having to turn over all of her social media content to her litigation opponent. The court’s decision helps define the contours of discoverable information in cases involving social media evidence.
Plaintiff was injured in an auto accident and sued defendant insurance company after it refused to pay medical bills. Defendant served a production request seeking, among other things, “a full printout of all of [plaintiff’s] social media website pages and all photographs posted thereon . . . from August 26, 2008 to the present.” Plaintiff objected to the request on grounds it was overly burdensome and harassing.
Read more on InformationLawGroup.
It’s a good decision in terms of helping to call a halt to overly broad fishing expeditions. But the outcome might have been very different if there was even one public post or public image that supported the insurance company’s request to get everything. I suspect it’s still prudent for us all to assume that if we’re involved in litigation, there’s a chance anything we’ve posted on social media platforms may become discoverable – even what we seek to protect as “private.”