New York Court of Appeals clarifies disclosure standard for social media.

The New York Court of Appeals clarified prior opinions regarding disclosure of social media accounts in personal injury actions. Prior precedent stated a party must show that there was relevant material on the social media account by demonstrating that the material was shown on the public portions of the social media site. However, the Court of Appeals held that this approach was overly restrictive because it limited disclosure to only those cases where the plaintiff’s profile was public, allowing a plaintiff to prohibit disclosure merely by changing his or her settings to private. The court also said that commencement of a personal injury action does not render the entire social media account discoverable. Rather, discovery orders should consider the nature of the underlying incident, the injuries claimed, temporal limitations, and ensure that the disclosure does not include sensitive or embarrassing material that is of marginal relevance. The opinion is open to interpretation by the lower courts, and we are sure to see more litigation on this issue in the future. Importantly, it opens the door to more social media discovery by rejecting precedent stating that public materials from a social media profile were needed to show a basis for discovery. 

_{Case Law Alerts, 2^nd Quarter, April 2018}

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