A United States District Court Judge recently punished an employee with sanctions for deleting his facebook account. The employee was involved in a workplace accident caused by a third party. He claimed that the accident permanently disabled him and significantly impacted his business, physical, and social activities.
The defense asked him for his facebook login information, and the judge eventually ordered the employee to release the information to the opposition. Apparently the defense attorneys had caught wind that the employee had made several posts on his facebook account about his social, physical, and business activities that were inconsistent with the the employee’s claims that his ability to work and physical and social activities were permanently affected by his injuries.
The employee understood that the defense would not access the account directly, but would request information from administrators at Facebook (the employee was mistaken about his “understanding”). The employee received notice from Facebook that his account had been accessed by an unfamiliar IP address in New Jersey (defense counsel) and he deactivated his account before the defense was able to access much information. Facebook permanently deleted his account after 14 days of the account being deactivated, as per their policy.
Ruling that litigants have an obligation to preserve evidence during a trial, the judge imposed sanctions against the employee. At trial, the defense will be able to argue that the employee destroyed the evidence out of a “well-founded fear that the contents would harm him.”
The lessons from this case?
- Your Facebook posts can be obtained and used against you in court;
- If you are involved in litigation, it’s too late to delete your damaging posts; and
- The inference the jury is allowed to make regarding the missing information may be worse than the information itself.