Irene’s Aftermath: Your Legal Rights When Your Neighbor’s Tree Causes Property Damage or Personal Injury

In the wake of Irene’s path of destruction, you may be wondering what your legal rights are if your neighbor’s tree fell onto your property causing personal injury or property damage. The New Hampshire Supreme Court recently provided some guidance on this issue. The Court held that a landowner who knows or should know that his tree is decayed or defective and who fails to reasonably maintain the tree is liable for the resulting damages even when the harm occurs outside his property line. The court however made it clear that for liability to arise, the decay and disease of the tree must be readily apparent thereby legally requiring the landowner to take reasonable steps to prevent damages and injury before they occur. On the other hand, if the neighbor’s tree was perfectly healthy before falling, he will not be held responsible for any resulting damage or injuries.

http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/opinions/2011/2011022pesat.pdf

Submitted By Elizabeth M. Leonard, Esq.
603-629-4546
eleonard@wiggin-nourie.com

Plaintiff’s ‘Private’ Social Networking Postings No Longer Really ‘Private’

Complete Facebook and MySpace History Can (and Should!) be Obtained in Discovery

Investigation into the publicly accessible postings of a plaintiff or claimant on social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace has long been an important part of routine discovery practice. Though ethical considerations prohibit defense counsel from soliciting increased access to a plaintiff’s social networking pages through “friend requests” or other similar means, material that a plaintiff has made publicly available to all on the internet is fair game. Until recently, the publicly available postings of a plaintiff were all that were generally available to the defense. A recent decision from a trial court in New York and a resulting software change made by Facebook in response to that decision may, however, give defendants access to a personal injury plaintiff’s complete Facebook history.

In Romano v. Steelcase, Inc., 907 N.Y.S.2d 650 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2010), a personal injury case in which the plaintiff was claiming to have suffered loss of enjoyment of life and permanent injuries, the court found that production of the plaintiff’s entries on her Facebook and MySpace accounts “would not be violative of her right to privacy” and that when the plaintiff created her Facebook and MySpace accounts, “she consented to the fact that her personal information would be shared with others.” Id. at 657. In so holding, the court noted that such sharing “is the very nature and purpose of these social networking sites else they would cease to exist.” Id. (emphasis added). The court ultimately granted defendant’s motion to compel and ordered the plaintiff to give the defendant access to her “current and historical Facebook and MySpace pages and accounts, including all deleted pages and related information.” Id. at 657.

Largely in response to the court’s order in Romano, Facebook recently implemented a change in its software that makes accessing one’s current and historical Facebook pages and accounts a very simple process – through a few clicks, a user can obtain, via email, a link to a .ZIP file containing everything that the user has ever posted to Facebook or has had posted on his or her “wall.” This file contains a user’s complete Facebook history and it can be very easily transferred to a disc, sent via email, or posted to a large-file transfer site.

Learn more about the Romano decision and about obtaining this .ZIP file through discovery by reading a more complete article on the issue here. You can also contact the author directly at amordecai@wiggin-nourie.com or by phone at 603-629-4575.


-Submitted By Adam Mordecai, Esq.
603-629-4575
amordecai@wiggin-nourie.com