Be Careful What You Post! | Courtroom Strategy by Attorney Oscar Michelen:
Litigants in a court case beware! Your adversary may be allowed to view all of your postings, including private and deleted ones, if they bear any relation to the court case. In the first case of its kind yesterday, a Suffolk County NY Judge, in Romano v. Steelcase, Inc., allowed a defendant in a personal injury lawsuit to obtain access to the Facebook profile of the plaintiff suing them. The court held that since the plaintiff put her physical health at issue by suing, she could not restrict the defendant from obtaining evidence that might support or contradict her claims. Supreme Court Judge Allen Spinner reasoned -I think completely correctly – that social networking sites are not private lockboxes where you store your most intimate secrets; in fact their privacy policies tell you that they are public spaces. Therefore he said:
“Plaintiff has no legitimate reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Even deleting stuff seems to be no protection from the long arm of the law.
