Social media sites are transforming not only the daily lives of consumers, but also how companies interact with consumers. Here at Morrison Foerster, across all of our practice groups, we are seeing complex, cutting-edge legal issues arising out of social media. As with the Internet boom during the mid-to-late 1990s, social media is generating new legal questions at a far faster pace than the law’s ability to provide answers to such questions. In an effort to stay on top of these emerging issues, and to keep our clients and friends informed of new developments, Morrison Foerster publishes this blog devoted to the law and business of social media.<h2>ABOUT MORRISON FOERSTER</h2>Morrison Foerster is a leading global law firm that transforms complexity into advantage for its clients. Our clients include some of the largest financial institutions, banks, consulting and accounting firms, and Fortune 100, technology, and life sciences companies. Highlighting the firm’s commitment to client service, leadership in market-changing deals and impact litigation, and values-based culture, Morrison Foerster has been repeatedly recognized as one of the top 10 firms on The American Lawyer’s A-List. Year after year, the firm receives significant recognition from Chambers and The Legal 500 across their various guides, including Global, USA, Asia‑Pacific, Europe, UK, Latin America, and FinTech Legal. Our lawyers passionately care about delivering legal excellence while living our values. Morrison Foerster has a long-standing commitment to creating a culture that respects and celebrates differences, while providing an inclusive environment. The firm has achieved Mansfield Certification Plus since 2018 as a result of successfully reaching at least 30 percent women, communities of color, and LGBTQ+ lawyer representation in a notable number of current leadership roles and committees. The firm also has a long history of commitment to the community and society through providing pro bono legal services, including litigating for civil rights and civil liberties, improving public education and fostering the wellbeing of children, advocating for veterans, promoting international human rights, enforcing the right to asylum, and safeguarding the environment.

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Aaron is the chair of the firm’s Technology Transactions Group and co-chair of the Interactive + Digital Media Group. He advises clients on a wide range of complex transactions involving intellectual property and technology, including structuring and negotiating strategic licensing, development, collaboration, procurement, and distribution deals.Aaron’s practice focuses on advising both established and emerging companies in a variety of data- and technology-intensive sectors, including software, SaaS, cloud-based technology, digital media (social media, AR/VR, gaming, streaming media, AdTech), AI, healthcare, consumer electronics, e-commerce, other online business models, and mobile applications. He also maintains an active practice counseling companies on branding and marketing, trademark licensing, and content-related transactions, as well as the intellectual property aspects of mergers, acquisitions, asset spin-offs, and private equity investments.He has represented clients such as Autodesk, Meta, OpenAI, Splunk, Konami, Kaiser Permanente, SoftBank, Visa, and Yahoo, among others.Aaron has been recognized by numerous publications for his work on market-defining technology transactions. He is currently ranked by Chambers USA for “Technology Transactions.”Aaron also serves as co-editor of Socially Aware, the firm’s award-winning newsletter and blog devoted to the law and business of social media, and regularly publishes on various IP and technology-related topics. Aaron is also a sought-after speaker on new and emerging areas of law, and is a frequent presenter and panelist at conferences and legal services programs. In addition to his active practice, Aaron regularly provides pro bono assistance to various nonprofit and charitable organizations such as Common Sense Media and the Starlight Children’s Foundation. He is a member of the board of directors of California Lawyers for the Arts.While in law school at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, Aaron served as executive editor of the California Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Following law school, Aaron served as law clerk to the Honorable William H. Orrick and the Honorable Martin J. Jenkins, both United States District Judges for the Northern District of California.

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Partner

Aaron is the chair of our Technology Transactions Group. He advises clients on a wide range of complex transactions involving intellectual property and technology, including structuring and negotiating strategic licensing, development, collaboration, procurement, and distribution deals. Aaron’s practice focuses on advising both established and emerging companies in a variety of data– and technology–intensive sectors, including software, SaaS, cloud computing, AR/VR, AI, gaming, healthcare, consumer electronics, social media, e–commerce, other online business models, and mobile applications. He also maintains an active practice counseling companies on the intellectual property aspects of mergers, acquisitions, asset spin–offs, and private equity investments.

Aaron P. Rubin

Lawrence Gallick is of counsel in the firm’s Austin office and a member of the Technology Transactions Group.Lawrence focuses his practice on technology transactions and licensing matters. His diverse experience includes advising on SaaS agreements, cross-licensing agreements, research and collaboration agreements, development agreements, and distribution agreements. He counsels a broad range of companies across the software, hardware, life sciences, biotech and FinTech spaces, as well as other entities including universities.He advises clients in connection with general corporate matters including contract negotiations, and leasing and technology placement agreements.Lawrence also serves as co-editor of <a href="https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/" target="_blank">Socially Aware</a>, the firm’s award-winning newsletter and blog devoted to the law and business of social media, and regularly publishes on various IP and technology-related topics.Prior to joining the firm, Lawrence was counsel at another major law firm. Before earning his law degree, Lawrence was a web consultant, project manager, and web developer in Portland, Oregon, where he managed and consulted on projects using industry methodologies and performed custom development and integration of content management systems.Lawrence was named a Super Lawyers “Rising Star” in 2015 and 2018–2022, and is licensed in both California and New York. Lawrence earned his J.D. from the University at Buffalo School of Law, where he was the electronic systems editor for the Buffalo Law Review and awarded the ABA-BNA Award for Excellence in the Study of Intellectual Property Law.

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Lawrence Gallick

Anthony Ramirez is a partner in the Technology Transactions Group in the New York office of Morrison Foerster.Anthony advises clients on general commercial and transactional matters. He regularly advises companies on the IP aspects of their M&A transactions. His clients include technology, digital media and content for television and music, financial services, and communications companies with diverse intellectual property assets and issues.His practice focuses on the legal aspects of developing, licensing, and commercializing technology and intellectual property, as well as negotiating general commercial contracts, including outsourcing transactions, as well as content and data licenses. He regularly assists clients with legal issues relating to licensing and commercialization of digital media and content, digital content that is distributed over the Internet or streamed, mobile applications and social media, as well as the licensing of recorded music for distribution via digital platforms. Anthony is also experienced with issues relating to open-source software, software development, artificial intelligence and machine learning, cloud-based technology, and protection of proprietary information.Anthony has extensive experience working on matters involving disruptive technologies, such as blockchain. He has helped fintech clients with general intellectual property issues in connection with terms of service for online financial products and services.Anthony is an integral part of the outside pro bono legal team for nonprofit organizations based in New York, including advising clients on legal issues regarding entertainment, social media, privacy rights, and the negotiation of outsourcing and service agreements. Anthony received his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 2009. He received his B.S. from Cornell University in 2004.

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Anthony Ramirez is a partner in the Technology Transactions Group in the New York office of Morrison Foerster. He advises clients on general commercial and transactional matters. His clients include technology, media, and communications companies with considerable intellectual property assets. His practice focuses on the legal aspects of licensing and commercializing technology and intellectual property, as well as negotiating general commercial contracts. He also regularly assists clients with legal issues relating to mobile applications and social media.

Anthony M. Ramirez

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Socially Aware is devoted to the law and business of social media, proactively addressing emerging issues and keeping our clients informed of new developments. We cover fields such as artificial intelligence, privacy and data security, Section 230, intellectual property, and much more.

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Lawrence W. Gallick

Social Links: If the Suit Fits

Social Links: Age Verification, X Appeal, and the Great White North

Social Links: Fake Reviews, Real Rulings, and an Epic Fail

Lawrence W. Gallick on Toth v. Everly Well, Inc.

Social Links: Going Back to Cali

In law school, everybody learns the adage that hard cases make bad law. When it comes to the Federal Trade Commission, a better aphorism might be, “easy cases make new law.” The FTC’s recent settlement with Nomi Technologies Inc. is, as the FTC’s press release notes, the “FTC’s first against a retail tracking company.” On its face, the case is like many FTC privacy cases: It challenges a statement in the company’s privacy policy for allegedly being inconsistent with the company’s actual practices and thus deceptive. Under the surface, however, the case may open the door for the FTC to create a notice-and-choice regime for the physical tracking of consumers, analogous to its well-established notice-and-choice regime for online tracking.“Retail Tracking” and Nomi’s Allegedly Deceptive PracticesRetail tracking occurs when retailers, or their third-party service providers, capture and track the movements of consumers in and around stores through their mobile devices, such as through the use of Wi-Fi or beacons, in order, for example, to better understand store traffic or serve targeted offers. The FTC’s chief technologist recently published detailed comments on the “privacy trade-offs” of retail tracking and the various technologies that companies are using to engage in it. Given the potential lack of transparency around the practice and the corresponding privacy implications, it is not surprising that the FTC decided to address the practice through its Section 5 authority, even if the FTC did so in an indirect fashion.It is also not surprising that the FTC has moved cautiously into this space. The facts of In re Nomi, as alleged in the complaint, are simple. Nomi provided mobile device tracking technology that enabled its clients, brick-and-mortar retailers, to receive analytics reports about aggregate customer traffic patterns — that is, how long consumers stay in the store and in which sections, how long they wait in line, what percentage of consumers pass by the store altogether, and so on. Nomi represented in the privacy policies posted on its website that it would “[a]lways allow consumers to opt out of Nomi’s service on its website as well as at any retailer using Nomi’s technology.” While Nomi offered an opt-out on its website, it allegedly did not provide an opt-out mechanism at its clients’ retail locations, thus rendering its privacy policy promise deceptive, in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act.The FTC further alleged that Nomi represented, expressly or by implication, that consumers would be given notice when they were being tracked at a retail location. The statement of Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and Commissioners Julie Brill and Terrell McSweeny in support of the complaint and proposed order explains that “the express promise of an in-store opt out necessarily makes a second, implied promise: that retailers using Nomi’s service would notify consumers that the service was in use. This promise was also false. Nomi did not require its clients to provide such a notice. To our knowledge, no retailer provided such a notice on its own.” By allegedly failing to provide notice when a retail location was utilizing Nomi’s service to track customers, Nomi’s implied promise to provide notice was also deceptive.The FTC Keeps Nomi Narrow, for Now. What Lessons Can Others Learn?The proposed order provides for very narrow injunctive relief: It simply enjoins Nomi from misrepresenting how consumers can control the collection, use, disclosure or sharing of information collected from them or their devices, and from misrepresenting the extent to which consumers will receive notice about such tracking. The majority commissioners, in their statement, were at pains to disclaim any significance of the case with regard to the practice of retail tracking specifically:While the consent order does not require that Nomi provide in-store notice when a store uses its services or offer an in-store opt out, that was not the Commission’s goal in bringing this case. This case is simply about ensuring that when companies promise consumers the ability to make choices, they follow through on those promises.In other words, Nomi is the FTC’s first case involving brick-and-mortar tracking, but the FTC is not yet creating new law: The proposed order does not impose any affirmative notice and choice obligations on industry participants in the retail tracking space. It is not surprising that the commission declined to take such a drastic step with a practice that is still, relatively speaking, in its infancy, and that does not, on its face, involve sensitive personal information (though, while the information collected may be anonymous and analyzed only in aggregate, some retailers may, or at least could, pair tracking information through their apps with other information about identifying a specific consumer).When the FTC does impose specific obligations relating to a particular practice, it typically moves in an incremental fashion. For example, the FTC noted in its 2009 Report on Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising and again in its 2012 Privacy Report that the collection of precise geolocation requires affirmative express consent because such information is sensitive. The FTC continued to indicate, in guidance and follow-on staff reports, that a failure to provide notice and obtain affirmative opt-in consent for the collection of precise geolocation information could give rise to a cause of action for deception under Section 5 of the FTC Act.Then, when the FTC settled a case (When the FTC does impose specific obligations relating to a particular practice, it typically moves in an incremental fashion. For example, the FTC noted in its 2009 Report on Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising and again in its 2012 Privacy Report that the collection of precise geolocation requires affirmative express consent because such information is sensitive. The FTC continued to indicate, in guidance and follow-on staff reports, that a failure to provide notice and obtain affirmative opt-in consent for the collection of precise geolocation information could give rise to a cause of action for deception under Section 5 of the FTC Act.Then, when the FTC settled a case (Goldenshores), alleging violations of Section 5 relating to an Android app’s collection, use and disclosure of precise geolocation from users’ devices, the order imposed specific parameters on the out-of-policy notice and choice that the app had to provide — effectively creating a new notice and choice regime for the collection, use and disclosure of such information that companies ignore at their peril.By contrast, theThen, when the FTC settled a case (Goldenshores), alleging violations of Section 5 relating to an Android app’s collection, use and disclosure of precise geolocation from users’ devices, the order imposed specific parameters on the out-of-policy notice and choice that the app had to provide — effectively creating a new notice and choice regime for the collection, use and disclosure of such information that companies ignore at their peril.By contrast, theBy contrast, the <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/federal-trade-commission-staff-report-self-regulatory-principles-online-behavioral-advertising/p085400behavadreport.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">narrow approach the FTC has taken with Nomi</a> raises the question of whether the FTC would ever impose a notice and choice obligation for offline, retail tracking. We have no certainty around the FTC’s view, but it is reasonable to anticipate that the FTC will move in a direction that mirrors its position with respect to online tracking — that is, that at least when information is collected for targeted advertising purposes, a company should provide meaningful disclosures to consumers about the tracking and choice with respect to whether to allow it.[2] The FTC could ultimately deem a failure to provide such notice and/or choice an unfair and/or deceptive practice under Section 5 of the FTC Act.What does this mean for retailers and other places of business? In light of Nomi and our expectations with respect to the direction the FTC is likely to take, companies that engage in in-store tracking should consider how best to provide their customers with notice and choice. Whatever the FTC does, it will probably move conservatively. That means that the FTC is likely to continue to identify practices as violations of Section 5 if they can be remedied without stifling retail tracking technology as it matures.The Nomi complaint presents two interrelated themes that provide a guide to future enforcement. First, choice must be linked to notice, meaning that, as far as the FTC is concerned, consumers do not have meaningful choice unless they also have notice at the point of collection, even if notice is provided only in a privacy policy only. Nomi can thus be read to suggest that, at least in some circumstances, choice with regard to virtual tracking needs to be accompanied by notice in the brick-and-mortar world. Second, the complaint suggests, obliquely, that tracking consumers’ physical activities is “material” — i.e., that it is likely to affect the consumer’s conduct. If that is right, then this type of tracking must be disclosed to consumers because the failure to make such a disclosure would be, axiomatically, a material omission.How should retailers proceed? One option is to track only those customers who have downloaded the retailer’s app and affirmatively agreed to be tracked for identified purposes, such as the delivery of targeted offers. Another option is to use a vendor that subscribes to the Future of Privacy Forum Mobile Location Analytics Code of Conduct, which requires participating mobile location analytics companies to, among other things, provide consumers with appropriate notice and choice. These types of compliance strategies could help protect companies from the next possible phase of FTC enforcement in this space, since they address what appear to be, for now, the most direct ways to avoid conducting retail tracking without providing notice and choice.

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Clients seek out Julie because of her practical advice on cutting-edge issues at the intersection of privacy and consumer protection laws. She provides clients with practical solutions to compliance c

Julie O'Neill

Clients seek out Julie because of her practical advice on cutting-edge issues at the intersection of privacy and consumer protection laws. She provides clients with practical solutions to compliance challenges around a wide variety of both online and offline privacy issues, including tracking, interest-based advertising, geo-targeting and other mobile tracking, personalization, and cross-device tracking. Recognized in The Legal 500 US 2014, 2016, 2019, and 2020 and Chambers USA 2021 for her exceptional legal work, her clients praise her saying, “She is really good at giving practical, targeted advice and taking stock of what the risk profile of the client is, so that the advice is holistic.” (Chambers USA 2021).

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The FTC Weighs in on In-Store Tracking. Or Does It?

The FTC Weighs in on In-Store Tracking. Or Does It?

In law school, everybody learns the adage that hard cases make bad law. When it comes to the Federal Trade Commission, a better aphorism might be, “easy cases m

Facebook: Fact or fiction? These days, courts are more and more frequently faced with disputes over whether, as part of the discovery process, a litigant should be entitled to view the opposing party’s social media posts. As we’ve <a href="https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2015/05/01/status-updates-94/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">discussed</a>, some courts deciding <a href="http://www.4dca.org/opinions/Jan%202015/01-07-15/4D14-138.op.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">physical</a> and emotional injury claims have held that the photos and status updates that the plaintiffs in those cases posted to Facebook were relevant to proving or disproving those claims. But are they always? A <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/users/2015/04/social_media_and_the_law_if_you_re_claiming_emotional_distress_don_t_appear.single.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recent column in Slate</a> points out that some judges and experts are questioning whether a person’s social media posts are adequate reflections of his or her emotional well-being. In one 2013 case over alleged disability discrimination—the plaintiff claimed her work supervisor mocked her after she told him she’d been diagnosed with adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder—a federal district court judge in New York held that “The fact that an individual may express some degree of joy, happiness, or sociability on certain occasions sheds little light on the issue of whether he or she is actually suffering emotional distress… For example, a severely depressed person may have a good day or several good days and choose to post about those days and avoid posting about moods more reflective of his or her actual emotional state.” We at <a href="https://www.sociallyawareblog.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Socially Aware</a> tend to agree with this more skeptical view of the extent to which one’s “social” life reflects one’s real life. After all, if <a href="http://www.techtimes.com/articles/15498/20140914/photoshop-fake-vacation-facebook-artist.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a woman can fake an entire vacation on Facebook</a>, many of the platform’s users are likely posting status updates and pictures that are out of sync with their actual moods.Cutting words. Stories about people being fired or having a job offer rescinded because of their social media missteps have been around almost as long as social media itself, but <a href="http://time.com/money/3019899/10-facebook-twitter-mistakes-lost-job-millennials-viral/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">they usually involve “what were they thinking?” types of behavior</a>. We recently came across one that is a little less clear-cut. An engineer who’d just gotten job offers from Uber and Zenefits tried to crowdsource information that would help him decide between the two employers by posting <a href="http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-start-my-career-Uber-or-Zenefits" target="_blank" rel="noopener">what he considered to be the pros and cons of each</a> opportunity on Quora, a Q&A social network that allows users to pose questions to the community. He said good things about both companies, but in his “cons” list for Zenefits, he wrote, “My biggest problem with Zenefits is that it isn’t a buzzword like Uber. Most people won’t know what Zenefits is (or so I think). I think that this isn’t as exciting a brand name to have on your resume when applying to the likes of Google.” Zenefits CEO and co-founder Parker Conrad saw the Quora post and responded, right on the thread: “Definitely not Zenefits (n.b.—we are revoking the questioner’s offer to work at Zenefits),” he wrote. “We really value people who ‘get’ what we do and who *want* to work here, specifically. It’s not for everyone, but there are enough ppl out there who do want to work here that we can afford to be selective.” Conrad later edited his response, deleting the part about revoking the engineer’s offer, but his decision stands: The engineer is no longer welcome at Zenefits. Reactions on Twitter went both ways, The Washington Post reported. And <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/losing-job-offer-quora-uber-vs-zenefits-tai-tran" target="_blank" rel="noopener">some commentators</a> felt that both parties were at fault.Here today . . . Perhaps inspired by social media users’ concerns that their posts will be used against them in the ways we’ve just described—and, in the case of Cyber Dust, billionaire investor Mark Cuban’s receipt of a subpoena for his own text messages—<a href="http://www.saydaily.com/2014/09/disappearing-updates" target="_blank" rel="noopener">new disappearing messaging apps</a> are springing up all the time. One that recently <a href="http://linkis.com/snip.ly/S2UNU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">got the attention of the crowd at a tech conference in New York</a> is the photo-sharing app Rewind. Rewind allows you to create photo timelines through which the members of your network can scroll. As a result of the scrolling feature, a whole set of photos only takes up the space of a single photo in users’ feeds. The posts vanish after 24 hours. According to Tech Crunch, by making the photos disappear, the app’s creators hope “to elicit the same sort of spontaneity as Snapchat Stories,” which have been heralded as the future of social media.

Status Updates: Facebook Posts—Reliable Evidence?; Quora Post Costs Applicant a Job; a New Ephemeral Messaging App

Facebook: Fact or fiction? These days, courts are more and more frequently faced with disputes over whether, as part of the discovery process, a litigant should

Status Updates: Facebook Posts—Reliable Evidence?; Quora Post Costs Applicant a Job; a New Ephemeral Messaging App

As social media has become ubiquitous, courts are wrestling with more discovery disputes involving social media accounts.In a recent case, Crowe v. Marquette Transportation Co. Gulf-Inland, LLC, the plaintiff deactivated his Facebook account in an effort to be able to claim that he was no longer on Facebook. A federal court in Louisiana rejected this ploy, ordering the plaintiff to turn over all of his Facebook data to the defendant.Here’s the background story: On May 19, 2014, Brannon Crowe <a href="http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1913&context=historical" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sued</a> his employer, Marquette Transportation. Crowe claimed that, in April 2014, he had an accident at work that “resulted in serious painful injuries to his knee and other parts of his body.” Crowe sued for pain and suffering, medical expenses, lost wages, past and future disability, and other special damages.But Crowe may have unwittingly shot himself in the foot (or maybe the knee). The reason? Facebook.Around the time Crowe suffered his injuries, he sent a Facebook message to a friend saying that he had actually hurt himself while on a fishing trip. How Marquette Transportation got its hands on the message is unclear. Nonetheless, the message led Marquette Transportation to seek other Facebook information from Crowe in discovery. On October 17, 2014, Marquette Transportation specifically requested “the Facebook history of any account(s) that [Crowe] had or has for the period commencing two (2) weeks prior to the incident in question to the present date.”Crowe objected on several grounds. First, he claimed that his account had been “hacked.”Then he suggested that the account associated with the fishing trip message was not his because the name on the account was “Brannon CroWe” and he does not capitalize the “W” in his last name.Finally, Crowe claimed that he did not “presently have a Facebook account.” When questioned about that statement in a deposition, Crowe testified that, as of October 2014, he no longer had a Facebook account. Thus, Crowe was technically telling the truth; he had deactivated his account on October 21, 2014 (four days after Crowe received the discovery request to produce his Facebook account data).Deactivating your Facebook account, however, is not the same as deleting your account. As the Court noted, “It is readily apparent to any user who navigates to the page instructing how to deactivate an account that the two actions are different and have different consequences.” Under Facebook’s terms, deactivation simply means “your profile won’t be visible to other people on Facebook and people won’t be able to search for you,” and that, upon reactivation, “[y]our profile will be restored in its entirety.” In contrast, deleting your Facebook account “means you will not ever be able to reactivate or retrieve any of the content or information you’ve added,” and there is “no option for recovery.”As to Crowe’s claim that he was no longer on Facebook, the Court was having none of it. The court stated that “it is patently clear from even a cursory review that this information should have been produced as part of Crowe’s original response. This production makes it plain that Crowe’s testimony, at least in part, was inaccurate. That alone makes this information discoverable.”In short, the Court held that Crowe’s Facebook-related information was discoverable because Crowe had deactivated his account to keep the evidence from his employer—and did so only after he received a discovery request.Crowe may have inadvertently saved himself at least some trouble with the Court by deactivating his account rather than deleting it. This duty to preserve evidence in litigation extends to social media information and is triggered when a party reasonably foresees that evidence may be relevant to issues in litigation. As soon as he placed the source of his injuries at issue, Crowe triggered the duty to preserve. Deleting relevant social media data can result in <a href="http://www.sociallyawareblog.com/2013/04/16/spoliation-of-social-media-evidence-new-jersey-court-cracks-down/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sanctions</a> against the deleting party because the information is not recoverable, which implicates spoliation of evidence issues. In contrast, Crowe’s Facebook data was still accessible upon a simple re-login.Even though Crowe did not delete his account, the Court was obviously unhappy with Crowe. The Court found that Crowe unnecessarily delayed the proceedings and wasted the Court’s time by deactivating his account. And, ultimately, the Court ordered Crowe to produce all information in his Facebook account to his opponent in its entirety.This case serves as a lesson that nothing good will come from deleting or deactivating your Facebook account to hide evidence. Even if deactivating a Facebook account to conceal damaging evidence does not constitute spoliation, because the data is ultimately recoverable, courts will inevitably come down hard on efforts to conceal evidence, even ham-handed and harebrained efforts.

L.W. v. Snap Inc.,  675 F. Supp. 3d 1087 

Wamai v. Industrial Bank of Korea , 2021 WL 3038402 

In re Maxus Energy Corp.

In re Energy Future Holdings Corp.

James Paul McCartney v. Sony/ATV Publishing LLC

NFL Enterprises LLC v. EchoStar Satellite LLC

VOOM HD Holdings LLC v. EchoStar Satellite LLC

Change Healthcare Operations, LLC v WebMD Health Corp. 2017 WL 6610411  

Register.com, Inc. v. Verio, Inc.

Komag, Inc. v. Asahi Glass Co. Ltd.

Asante Techs. Inc. v. PMC–Sierra, Inc.

Biovail Corp. v. S.A.C. Capital Mgmt. 2009 WL 2844404 

Multi–Faceted Investigation of University Grants

Confidential International Arbitrations

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Alex advises on all aspects of complex commercial litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts and in arbitration. He has represented U.S. and international clients in actions involving 

J. Lawrence

J. Alexander Lawrence

Effort to Hide Facebook Evidence by Deactivating Account Ends Badly for Louisiana Man