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How to Authenticate Web Pages and Screenshots as Evidence

By Bruce Carton

Last week in ALM's Internet Law & Strategy newsletter, via Law.com, M. Anderson Berry and David Kiernan provided an excellent analysis of an issue that is of rapidly-growing importance: How can lawyers authenticate Web pages as evidence in court? The authors pose an interesting and very realistic hypothetical under which a plaintiff sues your client, claiming that his injuries have made him unable to work, travel or bowl. On the eve of trial, "you discover pictures and other details on a social networking website about plaintiff's recent trip to the International Bowling Museum & Hall of Fame, including a picture of plaintiff proudly holding a fluorescent orange bowling ball and a four-foot tall gilded trophy dated four days earlier." As you approach the witness with the smoking-gun printouts of the Web pages, you are met with an objection from opposing counsel: "Lack of foundation." Now what? Berry and Kiernan explain that the common tactic of taking a screenshot of a key Web page is like taking a photograph of the image as it appears on the monitor. If proper steps are not taken to admit the evidence, however, the value of this information may be lost, as courts are highly...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on January 25, 2010 (boomark / email).