District Court Sanctions The EEOC For Thwarting Discovery Of Social Media Content

In yet another case regarding discovery of social media content, Magistrate Judge Michael E. Hegarty of the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado recently sanctioned the EEOC for its efforts to evade discovery of social media content in EEOC v. The Original Honeybaked Ham,No 11-CV-2560 (D. Colo. Feb. 27, 2013), a systemic sexual harassment and retaliation case. The Defendant argued that many of its employees utilized social media to communicate and therefore claimed that the employees’ online statements were discoverable. On several occasions, the EEOC made the Defendant’s discovery efforts “more time consuming, laborious, and adversarial than it should have been.” Id. at 2. Thus, the Defendant filed a motion for sanctions in a last-ditch effort to compel the EEOC to comply with its discovery requests. Siding with the Defendant, Magistrate Judge Hegarty granted in part and denied in part the Defendant’s request for sanctions.

To read this blog post click here