It is said you should keep your enemies close and your friends closer, and that’s particularly true about your friends on Facebook. This case got started when a lawyer was taking a deposition of an 18-year old woman who was going to be a hostile witness in an upcoming case. During the deposition, the lawyer learned the witness had an account with Facebook and decided to find out more about her by visiting her personal pages. When he found access was blocked, he hired an investigator to become one of the witnesses friends and report back to him. Before he went ahead, he contacted the Philadelphia Bar Association Ethics Committee, which concluded the proposed course of action was deceptive from the get go, because it omitted the material fact that the investigator intended to become the witness’s friend in order to discredit her testimony in the upcoming case. So friendly lawyer is still an oxymoron, and as it is also said, “With friends like these, who needs enemies.”

THIS IS NEIL CHAYET LOOKING AT THE LAW

Ethics Opinion, USLW, Vol. 77, No. 43, Pg. 2679 5-12-09 (FACE FACTS, FACE DOWN, MY SPACE, YOUR SPACE)

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