“A Highly Fact-Specific Inquiry”: The Application of the Discovery Rule in the Age of Social Media

Manatt Litigation Associate wrote an article for Boston Bar Journal about the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s (SJC) decision in Davalos v. Bay Watch, Inc., in which the court addressed an issue of first impression in the Commonwealth: when and how does the discovery rule apply to toll the statute of limitations for tort claims based on social media posts? 

In the article, Athay detailed the background of the case, in which professional models sued a nightclub after it posted the models’ images on its social media account to promote the club’s venue. The plaintiffs argued for the application of the discovery rule to toll the statute of limitations for their tort claims, raising the question of how a court can determine whether an allegedly tortious social media post is “widespread” enough to prevent the application of the rule.  

After the SJC clarified that applying the discovery rule in such circumstances requires a fact-intensive, totality-of-the-circumstances analysis, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts allowed the defendant’s summary judgement motion and concluded that the plaintiffs’ reason to know of the social media posts, combined with the lack of evidence regarding “how widely shared or viewed the images in question were,” or “precisely how difficult the images were to find when they were posted,” provided “insufficient grounds to warrant the application of the discovery rule.”  

Athay concluded, “To avoid a similar fate, would-be plaintiffs seeking to bring ostensibly time-barred tort claims based on social media posts should take care to collect and record the factual details underlying their claims. The more complete the factual record, the better equipped courts will be to apply the fact-specific inquiry outlined by the SJC.” 

Read the full article .