Partner Michael Reda and associate attorney Michael Harriss provided readers of In Transit (the newsletter of the Trucking Law Committee of DRI) with an overview of typical foundational requirements to ensure that social media evidence is admissible.
Reda and Harriss laid out a theoretical background for applying Federal Rules of Evidence to the authentication of social media evidence, followed by a discussion of how courts have applied those Rules in actual practice. Finally, they delineated how to use the Tools of Discovery in the authentication process, including potential questions to use during depositions. Reda and Harriss emphasized the importance of securing information about an entire social-media account rather than relying on only cherry-picked posts or photographs.