Simms v Lewis - Facebook Discovery Order et al

In the Indiana County,  PA case of Simms v. Lewis, No. 11961 CD 2011 (C.P. Ind. Co. Oct. 10, 2012 Bianco, J.), Judge Thomas M. Bianco took a middle road and granted in part and denied in part a defendant's motion to compel access to a plaintiff's social networking information in a motor vehicle accident case.  The case involved a Facebook account, a MySpace account and a MyYearbook account. 

The court in rejected the Plaintiff's expectation of privacy argument, observing that "the purpose of social networking sites is to share information."  The court ruled that a "Plaintiff cannot maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy  when she created the account and voluntarily posted this information, knowing that the information could become publicly available."

http://www.padefense.org/recent-facebook-discovery-decisions-of-note.html

The complete opinion and order can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B83Pxa3TYcXMcGtnbVNzZnM1alU/edit