Employer Sued for Harassment May Discover Plaintiff’s Social Networking Site Postings
In EEOC v. Simply Storage Management, L.L.C., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 52766, the EEOC brought suit in federal court in Indiana alleging that Simply Storage was liable for the sexual harassment of a number of its employees. The EEOC asserted that while three of these claimants had suffered “garden variety” emotional distress that was not ongoing, two claimants had suffered more serious emotional injuries for which they had sought medical treatment and that one claimant had been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. Both of these employees maintained social networking site (“SNS”) accounts on Facebook and MySpace. Maintaining that information on these sites was relevant to the employees’ emotional distress claims, Simply Storage sought discovery of the their complete profiles on these sites, as well as all photos and videos posted on the sites.