Social Media Content in Civil Discovery: Navigating Rule-based and Statutory Limits on Disclosure

Allyson Haynes Stuart, Professor of Law | Charleston School of Law; Of Counsel, Crystal & Giannoni-Crystal

Allyson Haynes Stuart is an expert on privacy and e-discovery who has served as a Special Master and as an expert on e-discovery issues in state and federal courts, and who has practiced as a privacy and e-discovery professional with Crystal & Giannoni-Crystal, LLC since 2015, where she is Of Counsel. A Professor of Law at Charleston School of Law since 2004, she teaches E-Discovery, Information Privacy Law, Internet Law, Civil Procedure, Evidence, and Contracts. Her article Finding Privacy in a Sea of Social Media and Other E-Discovery appeared in the Northwestern Journal of Technology & Intellectual Property, and her most recent, The Privacy Paradox in Discovery, appears in the Summer 2024 Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law.

• Education & Credentials

Professor Stuart earned her Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law in 1995, where she served on the South Carolina Law Review and participated in Moot Court. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Area Studies, with an emphasis on Western Europe, from Duke University (1992).

• Recognition & Leadership

State and federal courts have appointed Professor Stuart as a Special Master to resolve e-discovery disputes and have received her testimony as an expert on e-discovery issues. For nine years she served as Faculty Advisor to the Federal Courts Law Review, organizing, moderating, and presenting at symposia including Ethics in the E-Discovery Age (2009), Privacy in the Federal Courts (2008), Searching for Data: New Rules and New Tools (2015), and Technology and the Criminal Justice System (2014). She also chaired the S.C. Lawyer’s Roadmap to Navigating the New Federal E-Discovery Rules symposium.

Her scholarship on privacy, social media, and the internet has been published in the George Mason Law Review, the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology, the N.C. Journal of Online Technology, the Northwestern Journal of Technology & Intellectual Property, the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law, the University of Miami Law Review, and the Penn State Law Review, and in casebooks, law review articles, and by courts. Representative works include Finding Privacy in a Sea of Social Media and Other E-Discovery, 12 Nw. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop. 149 (2014); Google Search Results: Buried If Not Forgotten, 15 N.C. J. Online Tech. 463 (2014); Virtual Blinds: Finding Online Privacy in Offline Precedents, 14 Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. L. 603 (2012); The Short Arm of the Law: Simplifying Personal Jurisdiction Over Virtually Present Defendants, 64 U. Miami L. Rev. 133 (2009); Online Privacy Policies: Contracting Away Control Over Personal Information?, 111 Penn St. L. Rev. 587 (2007); and Challenging The Law Online, S.W.L. Rev. Symposium on Nancy Kim’s Wrap Contracts (2015).

• Professional Involvement

Professor Stuart is a frequent speaker at CLE programs and law review symposia on privacy, internet law, and e-discovery. Her speaking engagements include the Southeastern Association of Law Schools Annual Conference, the NC/SC Labor & Employment Law Conference, the Privacy Law Scholars Conference, and numerous Charleston Law Review Symposia.

Beyond Charleston School of Law, she has taught Internet Law as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School and Comparative Privacy Law (the EU and the US) and Internet Law at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, Spain, and in the Stetson Study Abroad Program in Granada, Spain. From 2006 to 2012 she represented clients in family court and other pro bono matters as a volunteer attorney with Charleston Pro Bono Legal Services.

• Experience

Professor Stuart’s e-discovery practice spans court appointments as Special Master, expert engagements on e-discovery issues, and, since 2015, work as a privacy and e-discovery professional with Crystal & Giannoni-Crystal, LLC. At Charleston School of Law, where she has taught since 2004, she has for the past six years taught E-Discovery to upper-level students alongside Information Privacy Law and Internet Law.

Before joining the academy, she was Director of the Legal Department at Sony Corporation of America (2002–2004), where she managed litigation, advised senior management, and coordinated privacy compliance and website issues for an international, multi-faceted company. As an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in New York (1997–2002), she represented corporations, international organizations, and individuals in domestic and international litigation, arbitration, and regulatory investigations; appeared before federal district and bankruptcy courts; examined and defended fact and expert witnesses; and negotiated and drafted contracts involving securities, corporate transactions, intellectual property, products liability, and general commercial law. She began her career as a judicial law clerk to U.S. District Judge David C. Norton in Charleston, South Carolina (1995–1997).

SESSION 1 – Social Media Content in Civil Discovery: Navigating Rule-based and Statutory Limits on Disclosure | 12:00pm – 2:10pm

Three recent cases highlight the challenges and importance of social media discovery: Authors Guild v. OpenAI Inc. (S.D.N.Y. 2024), Snap v. Superior Court (Cal. App. 2024), and In re: OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation (S.D.N.Y. 2025). These cases address a company’s ability to challenge requests for employee social media messages based on state social media privacy statutes like California Labor Code §980, the applicability of the Stored Communications Act to subpoenas of social media companies, and the duties of counsel in surveying or interviewing custodians and conducting reviews of employee social media.

Social media content is an ever-increasing subject of discovery in all kinds of civil disputes. Most commonly, plaintiffs in employment discrimination or personal injury suits seeking damages for emotional injury or loss of enjoyment of life face demands for social media content that may contradict those allegations of injury. But recent cases highlight the strong role that social media discovery plays in any case where employees or other “custodians” have used such a platform or messaging application to communicate about relevant issues.

This CLE will offer an update on case law construing the rules governing discovery of social media content. It will give concrete advice for both seeking and objecting to such requests. It will address the context of employer production of employee social media posts and messages. And it will address statutes, such as the SCA, that may limit discovery of such data from the social media platforms themselves. Attorneys will also get a refresher on general procedures for preservation, review, production, and authentication of electronically stored information (ESI). This includes proportionality under Rule 26 and spoliation under Rule 37, as well as privacy and ethical concerns.

BREAK | 1:00pm – 1:10pm