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).
Legal issues covered in the case
The case above had several issues covered. First and foremost, it reminds plaintiffs and defendants that once a case is brought forward, it opens up a can of worms in the sense that any information that may relate to the case, whether private or not, may be used as discovery for the case in question. Even though anybody can find anything posted online, it could be argued that refusing to provide either litigant’s personal social media information constitutes a violation of privacy. In the case discussed above, the plaintiff during trial court did not wish to allow access to their private social media accounts to be used as discovery, as he believes it should be inadmissible in court. The appellate court then overruled the decision, breaking the plaintiff’s right to privacy. It is also to be noted that the defendant is not authorized to ask for complete discovery if they are unaware of the specific information they would need from discovery to help the case. In this case, Mathew had seen images of Vasquez-Santos being tagged while engaging in physical activities after the injury meaning that it was relevant and, by doing so, not breaking any laws.
Conclusion
In my opinion, the Vasquez-Santos v. Mathew case could arguably have broken the law of privacy from the perspective of an individual who is a third party. However, scrutiny of the matter reveals that the ruling by the appellate court was valid. For the defendant to fully explain that they did not cause permanent damage to the plaintiff, it is only reasonable for them to present the court with photographic evidence that the plaintiff did not suffer enough damage to lead to incapacitation (Robinson, 2017). I agree with the appellate court’s ruling as evidence as the evidence in question was able to provide a fair ruling in that, in as much as the plaintiff should receive some monetary compensation for the damages, it did not mean that the defendant, in this case, was obliged to pay the plaintiff for putting an end to his basketball career.
References
Jones, A. D. (2021). Forman v. Henkin: The Conflict between Social Media Discovery and User Privacy. Retrieved from https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals%2Fcallro7&div=5&id=&page=
Robinson, P. H. (2017). The Structure and Limits of Criminal Law, 17(1). doi:10.4324/9781315085159
Stieglitz, S., Mirbabaie, M., Ross, B., & Neuberger, C. (2018). Social Media Analytics – challenges in topic discovery, data collection, and Data Preparation. International Journal of Information Management, 39, 156–168. doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2017.12.002
write