In this disability discrimination case, the defendant filed a motion to compel the plaintiff to release records from her social media accounts.
Defendant’s motion to compel is limited to three categories of information: (1) postings about Plaintiff’s emotional and psychological well-being; (2) postings about Plaintiff’s physical damages; and (3) any accounts of the events alleged in Plaintiff’s.
The plaintiff objected to the requests as an unnecessary “impinge on her privacy”.
In determining the proper scope of discovery, the court applied a
“traditional relevance analysis”: “[t]he fact that Defendant is seeking social networking information as opposed to traditional discovery materials does not change the Court’s analysis.
However, the discoverability of this information is limited:
the ‘fact that the information [Defendant] seeks is in an electronic file as opposed to a file cabinet does not give [it] the right to rummage through the entire file.
The court also directed the plaintiff’s counsel to review and determine the relevance of the postings, keeping in mind the broad scope of discovery contemplated under Rule 26.
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