{"id":557173,"date":"2015-02-24T06:35:14","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T13:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/?p=557173"},"modified":"2015-02-18T13:36:46","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T20:36:46","slug":"post-opponent-can-probably-discover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/post-opponent-can-probably-discover\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Post It, Your Opponent Can Probably Discover It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dick Bennett\u00a0| Cozen O’Connor’s Property Insurance Law Observer | January 26, 2015<\/p>\n

In March we ran a post on how important videos, photographs, and statements on social media sites can be when investigating a property loss.\u00a0 A picture is literally worth a thousand words.\u00a0 Earlier this month, a Florida court explained that such material is also discoverable \u2013 even in situations where the policyholder employs privacy settings that prevent the general public from having access to his or her account \u2013 because the user\u2019s privacy interest in such a site is \u201cminimal, if any.\u201d\u00a0 Nucci v. Target Corp., \u2013 So.3d \u2013, 2015 WL 71726, 2015 Fla. App. LEXIS 153 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App., Jan. 7, 2015) involved a slip-and-fall, but it applies with equal force to discovery in a first-party matter.<\/p>\n

Maria Nucci filed a personal injury action against Target, alleging that she fell on \u201ca foreign substance\u201d on the floor of one of the defendant\u2019s stores.\u00a0 Her complaint contended that she sustained permanent injuries, aggravated pre-existing ones, and also experienced lost earnings and emotional pain and suffering.\u00a0 Prior to her deposition, Target\u2019s attorneys reviewed her Facebook profile and found that it contained 1,285 photographs.\u00a0 She was questioned about some of them at the deposition itself, and she promptly took three dozen of the pictures down.<\/p>\n

Target moved to compel.\u00a0 After a hearing, the trial court ordered production of \u201ccopies or screenshots of all photographs associated with\u201d any social networking account that Ms. Nucci was currently registered with from two years prior to the date of loss until the present.\u00a0 The plaintiff then sought certiorari review from Florida\u2019s intermediate level appellate court.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, a unanimous panel denied the petition.\u00a0 As Judge Robert M. Gross\u2019 opinion explained, one reason was that \u201ccertiorari review is available in only a narrow class of cases and [Ms. Nucci\u2019s] case does not meet the stringent requirements\u201d for that remedy.\u00a0 The judges also denied the petition, however, because the Facebook pictures were \u201chighly relevant\u201d and, most significantly, because it held that Ms. Nucci had \u201cbut a limited privacy interest, if any, in pictures posted on her social networking sites.\u201d<\/p>\n

With respect to relevance, Judge Gross explained the court\u2019s rationale as follows:<\/p>\n

In a personal injury case where the plaintiff is seeking intangible damages, the fact-finder is required to examine the quality of the plaintiff\u2019s life before and after the accident to determine the extent of the loss. \u00a0From testimony alone, it is often difficult for the fact-finder to grasp what a plaintiff\u2019s life was like prior to an accident. It would take a great novelist, a Tolstoy, a Dickens, or a Hemingway, to use words to summarize the totality of a prior life. \u00a0If a photograph is worth a thousand words, there is no better portrayal of what an individual\u2019s life was like than those photographs the individual has chosen to share through social media before the occurrence of an accident causing injury. Such photographs are the equivalent of a \u201cday in the life\u201d slide show produced by the plaintiff before the existence of any motive to manipulate reality. The photographs sought here are thus powerfully relevant to the damage issues in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

With respect to privacy, the panel held that \u201cthe relevance of the photographs overwhelms Nucci\u2019s minimal privacy interest in them.\u201d\u00a0 As Judge Gross noted, before the right to privacy attaches, \u201cthere must exist a legitimate expectation of privacy.\u201d\u00a0 Ms. Nucci argued that she had just such an expectation because her Facebook page had been on a privacy setting that prevented the general public from accessing her account.\u00a0 The court was unconvinced, however, explaining that the very nature of a social networking site such as Facebook effectively rules out such an expectation.\u00a0 According to the opinion:<\/p>\n

We agree with those cases concluding that, generally, the photographs posted on a social networking site are neither privileged nor protected by any right of privacy, regardless of any privacy settings that the user may have established.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0* \u00a0*<\/p>\n

Because information that an individual shares through social networking web-sites like Facebook may be copied and disseminated by another, the expectation that such information is private, in the traditional sense of the word, is not a reasonable one.<\/p>\n

via If You Post It, Your Opponent Can Probably Discover It | Cozen O’Connor’s Property Insurance Law Observer<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dick Bennett\u00a0| Cozen O’Connor’s Property Insurance Law Observer | January 26, 2015 In March we ran a post on how important videos, photographs, and statements on social media sites can be when investigating a property loss.\u00a0 A picture is literally worth a thousand words.\u00a0 Earlier this month, a Florida court explained that such material is… Continue reading If You Post It, Your Opponent Can Probably Discover It<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[3,361,6893,6892],"class_list":["post-557173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insurance-claims","tag-insurance-claims","tag-personal-injury","tag-slip-and-fall","tag-social-media","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nIf You Post It, Your Opponent Can Probably Discover It - 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