Social Media and the Courts

Social Media and the Courts

Overview

In this case, Vasquez-Santos v. Mathew, we are presented with the plaintiff, Genaro Vasquez-Santos, a semi-professional basketball player once in his career, unfortunately, encountered an accident with Leena Mathew, the defendant, which according to him, rendered him disabled, meaning he could no longer play basketball. Though the plaintiff had a valid argument, after a thorough social media investigation, the defendant found evidence contrary to his statement. Mathew provided the trial court with images of Vasquez-Santos playing football that were dated after the injury. These images mainly had the plaintiff tagged on social media platforms by other users. Vasquez-Santos replied that the images were from previous games and practices and were taken before the accident with Mathew. He also noted that he had no control over what was posted online as he neither took the images himself nor posted them on his private social media account. The defendant did not easily buy into the façade and, as such, decided to compel the lower courts to be accessed by a third-party data mining company. Mathew was genius enough to only ask for photographs and any other evidence of Vasquez-Santos engaging in physical activities by accessing his social media accounts, devices, and emails. The trial court brutally denied the request, pushing Mathew to appeal the case forward again, but now before the Appellate court (Court of Appeal). The appellate court was quick to state that as per the plaintiff’s prior court orders, they claimed to be following authorization from HIPAA that Facebook had denied as it was vague and immaterial, as well as an affidavit that claimed to no longer possess the said images. While in the appellate court, it was stated that private social media information could be used as discovery in cases where it contradicts or conflicts with the plaintiff’s alleged losses, restrictions, or disabilities (Stieglitz, Mirbabaie, Ross, & Neuberger, 2018). In this case, Vasquez-Santos stated that Mathew had prevented him from pursuing a basketball career, which resulted in enormous damages. This means that the defendant was entitled to discovery to prove that the plaintiff was still fit enough to play basketball even after the accident, as this would help in her defense against his claims of injury. In as much as the plaintiff never took the images himself, the fact that he was tagged shows that the images can be used as discovery as he is positioned to change control tagged images. This allowed Mathew to access images from the time posted or sent after the injury and the plaintiff engaging in basketball or other physical activities. Precedents from Forman v. Henkin were used to discuss how appropriate social media information can be used as discovery (Jones, 2021).