Papak, Paul J., United States Magistrate Judge
In an employment discrimination action alleging emotional distress, the trial court granted defendant’s motion to compel plaintiff’s emails, text messages, and online social media information.
Plaintiff brought an employment discrimination action against defendant alleging racial discrimination and retaliation. The opinion does not include many facts, but the defendant moved to compel all of plaintiff’s email and text message communications with current and former employees of defendant. Defendant also sought all social media information involving plaintiff including “photographs, videos, blogs, as well as Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace content” that related to plaintiff’s “emotion, feeling, or mental state or to events that could reasonably expected to produce a significant emotion, feeling or mental state.”
The court ordered that plaintiff produce all email and text messages exchanged by former or current employees of defendants. The court also ordered plaintiff to produce all social media information that revealed “any significant emotion, feeling, or mental state allegedly caused by defendant’s conduct” or “events or communications that could reasonably be expected to produce significant emotion, feeling, or mental state allegedly caused by defendant’s conduct.”
The court relied solely on E.E.O.C. v. Simply Storage Mgmt., LLC, 270 F.R.D. 430 (S.D.Ind. 2010), the “most frequently cited and well-reasoned case” addressing social media discoverability and emotional distress. The court agreed with that case recognizing that “social media can provide information inconsistent with a plaintiff’s allegation that defendant’s conduct caused her emotional distress, whether by revealing alternate sources of that emotional distress or undermining plaintiff’s allegations of that distress.”
v.
JONES LANG LASALLE AMERICAS, Inc., an Illinois Corporation, Defendant
Counsel
Michael J. Estok, Portland, OR, Toby J. Marshall, Jennifer Rust Murray, Terrell, Marshall, Daudt & Willie PLLC, Seattle, WA, for Plaintiff.Elizabeth E. Falone, Amanda A. Bolliger, Portland, OR, for Defendant.