Court allows plaintiff a quick peek into defendant’s Facebook account

A state court judge in Pennsylvania has come up with a new way to afford litigants access to social media as part of discovery in a pending civil action. Daniel Cummins at Tort Talk has the details:

The Judge’s page long Order does not provide the background on the case leading up to this Motion and Order, or why such discovery was pursued by the Plaintiff.

While the Court did grant the Plaintiff access to the Defendant’s Facebook page and ordered the Defendant not to delete any info from the Facebook profile, the Defendant was granted permission to change his login name and password after seven (7) days following his compliance with the Court’s Order.

Anyone desiring a copy of this Order may click here.

Not only did the judge create a new way for party-access to social media accounts, but did you notice that a plaintiff received access to the defendant’s social-media account. Not that this is entirely that surprising. Indeed, any information (paper, electronic, even social media) that is likely to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence in a civil action may be fair game during discovery for either side.

In the employment context, corporate-litigants should be mindful that if you press hard for a former employee’s social media goodies during employment-related litigation, the plaintiff may just fire back with a few social-media requests.