Legal Research

Opinion Rules Third Party Facebook "Friending" Unethical

The Philadelphia Bar Association recently issued an advisory opinion stating that it is unethical to have a third party "friend" a witness on Facebook for the purpose of gaining information about that person.

From the opinion:

The inquirer believes that the [Facebook & MySpace] pages maintained by the witness may contain information relevant to the matter in which the witness was deposed, and that could be used to impeach the witness's testimony should she testify at trial. The inquirer did not ask the witness to reveal the contents of her pages, either by permitting access to them on line or otherwise. He has, however, either himself or through agents, visited Facebook and Myspace and attempted to access both accounts. When that was done, it was found that access to the pages can be obtained only by the witness's permission, as discussed in detail above.

The inquirer states that based on what he saw in trying to access the pages, he has determined that the witness tends to allow access to anyone who asks (although it is not clear how he could know that), and states that he does not know if the witness would allow access to him if he asked her directly to do so.

The inquirer proposes to ask a third person, someone whose name the witness will not recognize, to go to the Facebook and Myspace websites, contact the witness and seek to "friend" her, to obtain access to the information on the pages. The third person would state only truthful information, for example, his or her true name, but would not reveal that he or she is affiliated with the lawyer or the true purpose for which he or she is seeking access, namely, to provide the information posted on the pages to a lawyer for possible use antagonistic to the witness. If the witness allows access, the third person would then provide the information posted on the pages to the inquirer who would evaluate it for possible use in the litigation.

The inquirer asks the [Professional Guidance] Committee's view as to whether the proposed course of conduct is permissible under the Rules of Professional Conduct, and whether he may use the information obtained from the pages if access is allowed.

See the full opinion for the Bar Associations' response to the this request.

Source: Fastcase blog

Full post as published by WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library on May 14, 2009 (boomark / email).