New York Accident Victim Ordered to Hand over Facebook and MySpace Accounts in Personal Injury Case

In the current Long Island case Romano v Steelcase, State Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Spinner ordered the plaintiff, Kathleen Romano, to open up her private Facebook and MySpace postings to a chair company she is suing in a personal injury case.

Romano claimed she was so severely injured when her chair collapsed that she was limited in her activities and that the accident had damaged her "enjoyment of life." However, her Facebook and MySpace pages contradicted these claims with evidence that she had traveled to Florida and Pennsylvania, and with a picture that showed her smiling happily away from her home despite her claim that she was largely confined to her house and bed.

In a motion filed by Steelcase, the chair company, the Justice ordered Romano to authorize MySpace and Facebook to turn over all their historical records of her pages. This included not only the public portions of her pages, but those she had set strict privacy setting for as well as those she may have recently deleted.

"To permit a party claiming very substantial damages for loss of enjoyment of life to hide behind self-set privacy controls on a website, the primary purpose of which is to enable people to share information...risks depriving the opposite party of access to material that may be relevant to ensuring a fair trial," wrote Justice Spinner in his ruling.

This was the first ruling of its kind by a New York court, and the plaintiff's lawyer has said he is planning an appeal.

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