The Best Way to Conduct Discovery into Social Media, Part II

By Brett Clark

Via The American Lawyer.

As a followup to my last post on this subject, Magistrate Judge Joe Brown of the Middle District of Tennessee offered another creative idea for allowing discovery into a social networking site while protecting privacy concerns.  Much like an in camera review of privileged documents, he proposed the following compromise:

In order to try to expedite further discovery regarding the photographs, their captions, and comments, the Magistrate Judge is willing to create a Facebook account. If Julie Knudsen and Michael Vann will accept the Magistrate Judge as a “friend” on Facebook for the sole purpose of reviewing photographs and related comments in camera, he will promptly review and disseminate any relevant information to the parties. The Magistrate Judge will then close this Facebook account. If this option is chosen, Plaintiff is required to notify the Magistrate Judge’s law clerk within fourteen (14) days of this order to set this up and provide the email addresses of Ms. Knudsen and Mr. Vann in order to locate their accounts on Facebook.

While the judge gets points for creativity, apparently no one took him up on the offer.