Social Media Marketing and Ethics Blog for Lawyers

An Oklahoma mother was arrested for allegedly attempting to sell her children on Facebook, Mashable reports. Misty VanHorn, a mother of two in Oklahoma, was arrested last month for alleged trafficking of minors on Facebook by offering her 10-month old and her 2 year-old for $4,000. According to the police report, VanHorn offered the kids several […]

As recently as a few years ago, authentication proved to be a substantial hurdle for an attorney seeking to admit social media content into evidence. Recent decisions, however, reveal a trend toward admission reports Corporate Counsel. The Rules of Evidence require that evidence must first be “authenticated” prior to be admitted at trial. It requires a showing that […]

A Hawaii man who posted a video of cracking open a beer bottle and taking a swig while driving on the LiveLeak video-sharing website is later arrested by the police for consuming alcohol while driving a motor vehicle, CNN reports. The man, Richard Godbehere, posted the clip in February under the title “Let’s Go Driving, Drinking!” to […]

A Miami-Dade judge declared a mistrial in a murder case after a defense lawyer posted a photo of her client’s leopard-print underwear on Facebook, according to the Miami Herald. The defendant in a murder trial accused of stabbing his girlfriend to death received clothes from his family to wear during trial. When Miami-Dade corrections officers lifted […]

A Florida trial judge’s status as Facebook friend of prosecutor constitutes legally sufficient ground for disqualification, according to the Fourth District Court of Appeals. Pierre Domville, a criminal defendant, moved to disqualify a trial judge and submitted an affidavit averring that the prosecutor handling the case and the trial judge are Facebook “friends.”  Domville further […]

At the crossroads of social media discovery, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The appropriate balance of discovery and privacy depends on the particular facts and circumstances of each case, a careful analysis of applicable law, the requested content, and the user’s expectation of privacy. No matter which direction the law proceeds, lawyers must be aware of […]

In part seven of Privacy v. Discovery: The Battle for Social Media Information, I analyze cases where courts have created unique solutions seeking to balance each party’s interest in privacy and discovery without setting precedent one way or the other: In Barnes v. CUS Nashville LLC d/b/a Coyote Ugly Saloon, 2010 WL 2265668 *1 (M.D. Tenn. 2010), […]

In part six of Privacy v. Discovery: The Battle for Social Media Information, I continue my analysis of the line of cases holding that certain social media information behind privacy settings may be shielded from discovery: In Tompkins v. Detroit Metropolitan Airport, 2012 WL 179320 *1 (E.D. Mich. 2012), the court held that social media content […]

In part five of Privacy v. Discovery: The Battle for Social Media Information, I analyze the seminal case holding that social media information behind privacy settings is shielded from discovery. As explained below, the Central District of California demonstrates that federal law shields certain social media content hidden from the general public through privacy settings […]

 In part four of Privacy v. Discovery: The Battle for Social Media Information, I continue my analysis of the line of cases holding that social media information behind privacy settings is discoverable: In Romano v. Steelcase Inc., 907 N.Y.S.2d 650 (N.Y. Sup. Ct., Suffolk County 2010), court held that a plaintiff lacked a reasonable expectation of […]