Court Demands Private Facebook Data

Defeat Globalism writes in with a Canadian court decision that has ordered a man suing over injuries from a car accident to answer questions about content on his private "friends only" Facebook page. "Lawyers for Janice Roman, the defendant in the lawsuit, believe information posted on John Leduc's private Facebook site — normally accessible only to his approved 'friends' — may be relevant to his claim an accident in Lindsay in 2004 lessened his enjoyment of life. As a result of the ruling by Justice David Brown of Ontario's Superior Court of Justice, Leduc must now submit to cross-examination by Roman's lawyers about what his Facebook page contains. Brown's Feb. 20 ruling also makes clear that lawyers must now explain to their clients 'in appropriate cases' that postings on Facebook or other networking sites — such as MySpace, LinkedIn and even blogs — may be relevant to allegations in a lawsuit, said Tariq Remtulla, a Toronto lawyer who has been following the issue."

Comments

What about emails between friends?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can the courts require that relatives and friends turn over data to the court? Why not just require every contact the suspect or defendant has turn over "pertinent data including email, voicemails, contact lists, letters, bank accounts and personal ties?

If I ever got in trouble Kevin Bacon would go down.

Re:What about emails between friends?

[saiha]

By "friends", do you mean people I've raided with on WoW?

Re:*BSD is Dying

[countvlad]

2000 called, they want their troll back.

Re:With all due respect to our Canadian neighbors

[MrNaz]

Are you telling me that my conclusion that Slashdot members are actually anthropomorphised vegetables is unfounded?

Facebook?

[InsertWittyNameHere]

We all know they should evaluate his porn downloads, not Facebook, to get an accurate assessment of the impact to his enjoyment of life.

Re:I'm not overly concerned

[icepick72]

Well "imo" doesn't constitute a well written comment in my opinion... so now you're even with the newspaper.

Why stop at facebook?

[Requiem18th]

Why stop at facebook? I want his house raided, maybe he keeps a personal diary hidden in his daughter's room, camouflaged with flower stickers, stenographically encoded in valley speak.

Re:With all due respect to our Canadian neighbors

[pbhj]

I was trying to think how an anthropomorphised vegetable would reply so I could make a witty retort, but I couldn't.

I'm not sure if that means I did or not.

The mind of a vegetable is too complex.