Legal Discovery: Discovery of Online Or Telecommunicated Information

Why Do We Get Sued?

Human beings by nature are prone to lawsuits. Everyday we engage in activity which can potentially lead to someone filing a lawsuit against someone. We do not wish bad things to happen to us; but, still they do happen. Whether we do things intentionally or negligently that causes someone to sue us, our lives are always exposed to situations that can possibly expose us to a potential lawsuit.

Basically, it is in our nature to create and/or fall prey to situations (intentionally or accidentally) which makes someone file a lawsuit against us.

When someone gets sued or sues someone else, both sides get equal access to information from each other that may be relevant to the lawsuit, and most likely will be damaging to the case of either party.

This article will focus on information that either side can obtain communicated by you and someone else through electronic devices. Informations are disclosed to both parties through the legal process called "discovery", which allows anyone to the lawsuit to obtain ANYTHING which might lead to information relevant to the lawsuit. So, even if the information is unrelated to the lawsuit, initially at the beginning of the case, such information can still be discovered (obtained).

How E-lectronic Information Applies To Particular Cases

Usually, electronically stored information are requested in cases involving issues that deal with information which cannot be obtained from any better source than the electronic storage sites.The following types of cases are examples of when e-discovery would be applicable. Consider:

• A case of alleged sexual harassment may lead a party to subpeona the other party's social website in order to determine whether there were any prior relationship between the alleged harasser and the plaintiff.

• A case involving alleged rape may lead a party to subpeona the other party's social website or obtain transcript of text messages in order to determine whether there was any prior sexual relation between the victim and the alleged rapist.

• A case involving alleged disclosure of sensitive business related information (e.g. trade secret, change in employee compensation, business practices) may lead to obtaining information from e-mails and chat messages in order to establish the alleged sensitive information were not "confidential", i.e. everybody knew about these information; hence, no "disclosure".

Information From Websites

Websites offering social networking services are almost on every website nowdays. Aside from the traditional social website such as Facebook, Myspace, Friendster which strictly focus on building social netwroks, nowdays there are other networks such as Twitter, Squidoo, and even Yahoo which allow users to post what they are doing and give an update of their status to whoever are on their friend's list.

These sites allow users to post not only basic information about themselves such as name, occupation, birthdate, etc. but also allow chat and photo sharing privileges.

Posting personal or non-personal information allow either side in a lawsuit to subpeona the social network sites and obtain records of all the chat messages and every picture shared.

Texts From Mobile Devices

Blackberries, Palm Pilots, iPhones, and other data intensive mobile devices are used everyday by business professionals in their everyday work life. Did you know that you can obtain a copy of your text message sent during a month from certain mobile service providers? It is possible because they store the text messages sent and received of an account, and copies of which can be furnished to the user upon request.

Imagine a party to a lawsuit had conversation via text messages with his friend about the lawsuit. The transcripts of such text messages are discoverable and can be obtained through subpeona of the service provider of the party's cell phone.

Conclusion

It would be wise to take caution about what information one decides to post online. Even if online sites may have policies which provides assurance that any deleted information is not stored in their database, it should be noted that one's own computer also stores information that are discoverable.

There are softwares which claim to retrieve deleted files from users' computers. If such softwares can recover deleted files, then it is logical to assume that the attempted deleted files were never actually deleted. Therefore, any information that can be obtained from one's personal computer can also be used against such person in a lawsuit.

THE ABOVE ARTICLE IS NOT INTENDED TO GIVE LEGAL ADVISE. IT IS ONLY AN EDUCATIONAL ARTICLE AND INTENDED TO GENERATE DISCUSSIONS AND FEEDBACKS FROM READERS. THE ABOVE ARTICLE SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR COMPETENT ADVICE FROM LEGAL COUNSEL. READERS ARE ADVISED TO USE THE ARTICLE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE, AND ENCOURAGED TO CONDUCT FURTHER RESEARCH.