Facebook Not So Private? Ontario Court Finds Facebook Profile Discoverable

Copyright 2009, Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP

Originally published in Blakes Bulletin on Litigation, March 2009

On February 20, 2009, in "Leduc v. Roman", the Ontario Superior Court of Justice made an order permitting the defendant to cross-examine a plaintiff in a motor vehicle accident suit on his Supplementary Affidavit of Documents regarding the kind of content he posted on his private Facebook profile. As more and more people use social networking websites, this precedent-setting decision has potentially wide-ranging implications, in the context of litigation, since users of social networking sites may be required to produce information from their profiles that is not publicly available but only available to their designated contacts, and then possibly be cross-examined on the nature of that information. It appears courts are willing to infer the existence of relevant documents on a user's private profile based on the mere existence of a publicly available