Over the past year, the Pennsylvania state trial and appellate courts have continued to grapple with issues pertaining to social media discovery as well as the admissibility of social media evidence at trial.

Discoverability of Social Media Content

In Kelter v. Flanagan, No. 286-Civil-2017 (C.P. Monroe Co. Feb. 19, 2018 Williamson, J.), Monroe County Judge David J. Williamson followed the developing common law that permits a party access to another party’s private social media pages only when it has been first established that information relevant to the litigation can be seen on the public pages of that profile. In Kelter, Williamson granted a defendant’s motion to compel a plaintiff to provide the defendant’s counsel with her Instagram account log-in information in order to allow for further discovery of the information on that profile.