Another New York trial court judge recently denied a defense discovery request for access to plaintiffs’ Facebook profiles.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Philip G. Minardo, sitting on Staten Island, ruled in Temperino v. Turner Construction Co., et al. that “[t]he mere claim that plaintiffs were members of FACEBOOK, in and of itself, is not a sufficient basis” for the court to issue a subpoena for the opposing parties’ Facebook records. (Read the complete decision below)
Can gaming company Zynga successfully obtain trademark rights to all things ending in ville, the French word for a town or village?
Answering that question is a task facing two federal courts.
Before it launched its billion dollar IPO, the San Francisco-based tech company threatened to sue computer game makers for having product names containing the ‘ville’ suffix.
Rather than accede to Zynga’s demands, game makers in West Virginia and Texas preemptively sued Zynga for court declarations that their game names — Blingville and Dungeonville — do not infringe any of the company’s trademark rights.
Tensions could reach a new high point today in the Facebook ownership claim lawsuit between plaintiff, convicted felon Paul Cegilia (inset), and Defendants Facebook and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.
A court hearing today in Buffalo, New York is scheduled to consider no less than eight (8) motions with roughly eighty (80) pleadings on among them on the court docket.
What are they all about?
More lawyers are learning the hard way that courts will not grant social media discovery requests without first laying a foundation for access to the accounts and information being sought.
A trial court judge on New York’s Long Island recently granted two different motions to strike defense requests for social media and electronic discovery in a single personal injury case (read the decision below).
The decision reinforces the idea that Facebook “fishing expeditions” are likely to be denied. Lawyers who simply ask for social media and electronic data, will be wishing they had done their homework, because without showing how and why they should be granted access to it, their requests will almost certainly be denied.
A juror who tweeted during a murder trial, and while he and his fellow jurors deliberated, led the Arkansas Supreme Court to reverse the conviction of a 26-year-old death row inmate.
While there were other factors that led the court to send the case back for a new trial, the tweets played a key role in its decision.
We’re not talking about a one time tweet either. The juror was a consistent, repeat offender who ignored the trial judge’s jury instructions even before opening statements about the case. He just couldn’t shake the Twitter bird off his back.
Facebook is hacking Congress. But don’t be alarmed.
It’s all legal. Really.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers and their staffs are making nice on Capitol Hill this afternoon in a hackathon with Facebook engineers and software developers.
Mark Zucerkberg’s team is helping Senators, Representatives, and congressional staffers brush up on their social media skills.
A Brooklyn jury acquitted a man accused of gun possession charges after his criminal defense lawyers discovered a treasure trove of derogatory, racist digital evidence on a Facebook group created by NYPD officers.
According to the New York Times, police officers who did not want to work at New York City’s annual West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn created a Facebook group to share their displeasure, complete with vulgar, intolerant epithets directed at members of New York City’s Caribbean community celebrating the event.
Last week a New York trial judge denied a defense discovery request for a personal injury plaintiff’s current and historical Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter account information.
New York Justice George J. Silver of State Supreme Court in Manhattan reasoned that simply making conclusory allegations that a party’s “Facebook account is material and necessary to their [client’s] defense” is insufficient to justify disclosure of a litigant’s private Facebook records.
Then Justice Silver talked about a Facebook “fishing expedition”:
Going to the dentist can be an unnerving experience. It can also feel like you’re getting more than a tooth pulled if you’re asked to give up any rights to critique the dental work you’ve had done, and assign all copyrights to any comments you make about it to…the dentist.
Ouch! That hurts!
That’s what prompted patient Robert Allen Lee to sue his dentist, Dr. Stacy Makhnevich and the North Carolina company, Medical Justice, that created and sold Makhnevich patient consent forms with the restrictive language (Read the lawsuit below)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hear arguments next year over the dismissal of a class-action by Facebook users who claimed they were hurt when Facebook promoted its “Friend Finder” by displaying their profile information.
A briefing schedule is now listed on the court’s case docket.
Last month, Judge Richard Seeborg granted Facebook’s motion to dismiss the Plaintiffs’ first amended complaint in the ‘Find Friends’ class-action, concluding that the plaintiffs failed to plead how they could actually be hurt. (Read the six-page decision below)
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