Chronological, oldest first
The fourteen decisions.
Griffin v. State
419 Md. 343, 19 A.3d 415 (Md. Ct. App. 2011)
Not admitted
Issue: Authentication
What happened. MySpace pages printed and offered through the investigating officer were not properly authenticated. The court reasoned that internet-derived evidence carries a heightened possibility of manipulation and pointed to alternative routes: testimony from the purported creator, examination of the creator's device, or information obtained directly from the platform.
Why it matters. The origin of the greater scrutiny approach. Still the first case opposing counsel reaches for when an exhibit rests on a printout.
State v. Eleck
130 Conn. App. 632, 23 A.3d 818 (Conn. App. Ct. 2011)
Not admitted
Issue: Authentication
What happened. Facebook messages were excluded despite circumstantial evidence suggesting the purported sender wrote them. The court accepted that an electronic document may be authenticated by direct testimony or by distinctive characteristics, but found the proffer here fell short of connecting the messages to the person named.
Why it matters. An early demonstration that circumstantial detail has to actually distinguish the author, not merely be consistent with them.
Tienda v. State
358 S.W.3d 633 (Tex. Crim. App. 2012)
Admitted
Issue: Authentication
What happened. Social networking profile pages were properly authenticated by their own contents plus surrounding circumstances, including references to the offense, photographs, and music, from which a reasonable juror could conclude the profiles belonged to the defendant.
Why it matters. The counterweight to Griffin, and the more widely followed rule. Distinctive content on the page can do the authenticating work by itself.
Allied Concrete Co. v. Lester
285 Va. 295, 736 S.E.2d 699 (Va. 2013)
Sanctions
Issue: Spoliation
What happened. A wrongful death plaintiff was instructed by counsel's office to clean up his Facebook account, deactivated it, and the account's state was then misrepresented in discovery responses. The trial court's sanctions against the plaintiff and his attorney totaled roughly $722,000, and the Supreme Court of Virginia upheld the sanctions while sustaining the underlying verdict.
Why it matters. The standing warning to both sides. Deleting social media once a duty to preserve has attached is far more expensive than whatever the posts contained.
Parker v. State
85 A.3d 682 (Del. 2014)
Admitted
Issue: Authentication
What happened. Facebook posts were properly admitted. Delaware expressly declined to adopt the Griffin approach and adopted the Texas approach instead, holding that circumstantial evidence together with testimony explaining how the material was obtained better conforms to the ordinary operation of Rules 104 and 901.
Why it matters. A clean statement of the jurisdictional split, with a state supreme court choosing between the two approaches in so many words.
Smith v. State
136 So. 3d 424 (Miss. 2014)
Not admitted
Issue: Authentication
What happened. Photocopies of messages from a social media account, purportedly written by the defendant, were not properly authenticated where the only link was a matching name and a small, grainy, low-quality profile photograph. The Mississippi Supreme Court found the error harmless on the facts but the authentication holding stands.
Why it matters. The clearest statement that a name plus a thumbnail is not a link. Cited constantly alongside Mangel.
United States v. Vayner
769 F.3d 125 (2d Cir. 2014)
Not admitted
Issue: Authentication
What happened. A printout of a social networking profile page was admitted at trial and the Second Circuit reversed, holding that the government produced insufficient evidence that the page was the defendant's own profile as opposed to a page he neither created nor controlled. The court expressly declined to decide whether a heightened standard applies, and reversed under the ordinary rule.
Why it matters. The most cited federal authority on the point. Note the reasoning: it did not need a special social media rule to exclude the exhibit.
Moroccanoil, Inc. v. Marc Anthony Cosmetics, Inc.
57 F. Supp. 3d 1203 (C.D. Cal. 2014)
Not admitted
Issue: Authentication
What happened. In a trademark dispute the court declined to receive Facebook screenshots, finding no way to establish that the images were an accurate representation of the live page and therefore no adequate basis for evidentiary reliability.
Why it matters. The case to cite when the objection is specifically to the screenshot as a form, rather than to the identity of the author.
Linscheid v. Natus Medical Inc.
2015 WL 1470122 (N.D. Ga. 2015)
Not admitted
Issue: Authentication
What happened. A LinkedIn profile page printed from the internet and supported by a declaration from the person who printed it was not authenticated. The declaration established the act of printing, not that the page was what it was claimed to be.
Why it matters. Worth reading by anyone who assumes a sworn statement about the act of capture solves the authentication problem. It does not.
Sublet v. State
442 Md. 632, 113 A.3d 695 (Md. Ct. App. 2015)
Mixed
Issue: Authentication
What happened. Consolidating three appeals involving Facebook and Twitter material, Maryland's highest court adopted the reasonable juror formulation: the trial judge must determine that there is proof from which a reasonable juror could find the evidence is what the proponent claims. Some exhibits were properly excluded on the facts, others admitted.
Why it matters. Maryland moving toward the mainstream. Anyone citing Griffin for a strict rule should be met with Sublet.
United States v. Browne
834 F.3d 403 (3d Cir. 2016)
Admitted
Issue: Authentication
What happened. Facebook chat logs were properly admitted where the government supplied extrinsic evidence connecting the account and the conversations to the defendant, including testimony from participants and corroborating detail. The court rejected reliance on the platform's certification alone as a route to self-authentication of the chat contents.
Why it matters. Useful for the distinction it draws: a platform record certifying that data came from its systems does not certify who was typing.
Commonwealth v. Mangel
181 A.3d 1154 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2018)
Not admitted
Issue: Authentication
What happened. The Commonwealth's motion to introduce Facebook posts and messages was denied and the Superior Court affirmed. Authentication of social media is evaluated case by case, and the proponent must present direct or circumstantial evidence corroborating the identity of the author. A matching name, a photograph and a general location were not enough, particularly where other accounts shared the same name.
Why it matters. The single most useful citation for the ownership-is-not-authorship distinction. Expect it from the other side whenever your exhibit rests on a profile match.
Edwards v. Junior State of America Foundation
No. 4:19-cv-140-SDJ (E.D. Tex. 2021)
Sanctions
Issue: Best evidence and spoliation
What happened. Facebook message screenshots offered in place of native files were held insufficient: an electronic file should be produced in native format or as a properly processed image inclusive of metadata, and screenshots that truncate posts and omit metadata do not accurately reflect the information. Because the native messages had been lost after a duty to preserve attached, the court applied Rule 37(e) and precluded the plaintiffs from offering evidence about the messages.
Why it matters. The best evidence case, and the one that turns a screenshot habit into sanctions exposure rather than merely a weak exhibit.
Weinhoffer v. Davie Shoring, Inc.
23 F.4th 579 (5th Cir. 2022)
Not admitted
Issue: Judicial notice and authentication
What happened. An Internet Archive Wayback Machine capture of auction terms was not a proper subject of judicial notice and was not self-authenticating. The court noted that the archive's own terms of use disclaim guarantees of accuracy, so testimony from someone with personal knowledge of the archive's reliability would be required.
Why it matters. Read this before assuming an archive link answers the question of what a page said on a given date. It does not, by itself.
Curated, not exhaustive. Longer lists circulate with partial citations that cannot be verified, which is worse than useless in a brief. Every case here can be located from the citation given, and every one should be read in full before it is relied on: several turn on procedural posture or facts a summary cannot convey, and Smith found the authentication error harmless on the facts even though the holding stands. Corrections and additions are welcome at support@getproofsnap.com.
