A growing trend in insurance disputes is a demand for insurers to have access to the claimant’s social media content. In January 2013, the District of Montana had to consider whether to compel a woman to produce all of her social media photos. The court did not grant this request and the decision serves as a good example of what is, or is not, an effective way to request this information.

In Keller, one of the plaintiffs claimed she injured her head, neck, and back in an automobile accident when the vehicle she was driving was struck from behind. Her mother also suffered injuries in the accident. At the time of the accident, they were insured under an automobile liability policy issued by the defendant. The plaintiffs made a claim for uninsured motorist benefits under the policy.

The defendant, under Federal Rule 37, moved for an order compelling the plaintiffs to respond to discovery requests for the production of their social network site content. The defendant’s rationale for the request was the plaintiffs alleged a “host of physical and emotional injuries.” In respect to the mother, the defendant argued “there is no good reason for her to shield information that might shed light on her or her daughter’s injuries.” This is the language of the request:

Request for Production No. 18: Please produce a full printout of all of Plaintiff [driver]’s social media website pages and all photographs posted thereon including, but not limited to, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Tagged, Meetup, myLife, Instagram and MeetMe from August 26, 2008 to the present.

Request for Production No. 19: Please produce a full printout of all of Plaintiff’s [mother's] social media website pages and all photographs posted thereon including, but not limited to, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Tagged, Meetup, myLife, Instagram and MeetMe from August 26, 2008 to the present.

As you can imagine, the court felt these requests were overbroad. It is well settled that social media content is discoverable, but the requestor must make a threshold showing that publicly available information on those sites undermines the plaintiff’s claims. The defendant did not come forward with any evidence that the content of either of the plaintiffs’ public postings in any way undermined their claims in this case. Absent such a showing, the defendant was not entitled to delve carte blanche into the nonpublic sections of the laintiffs’ social networking accounts, let alone all of them.

This case should serve as a lesson to other insurance litigants. You should only request access to social media accounts if you can make a threshold showing that the social media content will be relevant and hold admissible evidence. Otherwise you will rightly be admonished for undergoing a “fishing expedition” and your requests will be promptly denied.