Tagged: Electronic

Agree or Else: Delaware Adopts Revised Default Standards for Discovery

Effective December 8, 2011, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware revised its Default Standard for Discovery, Including Discovery of Electronically Stored Information (“ESI”). This third version of the Revised Default Standards contains some new provisions that apply to the discovery of ESI absent agreement by the parties or court order. The Revised Default Standards also set a detailed schedule for the initial exchange of discovery in patent litigation, and reinforce the Court’s expectation of cooperation among the parties and proportionality in the preservation, identification and production of relevant information. Some of the highlights and practical points of the Revised Default Standards are as follows:

Pennsylvania Court Orders Plaintiff to Disclose Facebook and MySpace Passwords, User Names, and Log in Names to Defendant

A Pennsylvania trial court recently became one of a growing number of courts to rule that a plaintiff’s non-public Facebook and MySpace postings are discoverable. On May 19, 2011, in Zimmerman v. Weis Markets, Inc., No. CV-09-1535, 2011 WL 2065410 (Pa. Comm. Pl. May 19, 2011) the Court of Common Pleas of Pennsylvania granted the defendant’s motion to compel the plaintiff, a former employee of the defendant, to disclose his Facebook and MySpace passwords, user names and log in names. Notably, the Court reasoned that because the plaintiff voluntarily posted all of the pictures and information on his Facebook and MySpace sites, he had no reasonable expectation of privacy to the postings although the posts were on non-public pages.

Employer Social Media Policies: The Dangers of Too Much Or Not Enough

Employers wanting to prohibit damaging communications from being made about them by employees through blogging and rapidly evolving social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn should be aware of a recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Complaint against American Medical Response of Connecticut, Inc. asserting that two of the more common employer restrictions on employee blogging and social media communications constitute unfair labor practices and are, therefore, unlawful. In its News Release, the NLRB pointed to two of the provisions in the company’s blogging and internet posting policies as being unlawful under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).