Relevance and The Social Network
After rewatching the Social Network movie recently with my family, I wanted to address a legal misconception that the movie turns on and that bothered me afterwards.
The movie’s core plot concerns two lawsuits against Mark Zuckerberg, and the movie implies that he settled both cases in part because of how lawyers would use some stupid and crass blog posts from his early days to get jurors to hate him. But, in reality, jurors probably would not see or hear those posts if those lawsuits ever went to trial.
Trials are not free-for-alls where each side can put in any information they want. Evidence in a federal trial must be “relevant” under the law, which basically means that it must help make a fact “of consequence” more or less likely to be true. The two lawsuits depicted in the Social Network concern (1) Zuckerberg’s interactions with the Winklevoss brothers and their partner regarding their networking project and (2) his interactions with Eduardo Saverin regarding Facebook. What he did or did not write in creating an earlier website and whether he was a jerk to an ex-girlfriend do not make any fact regarding his business interactions more or less likely to be true, and they thus would not be “relevant” under the law.
The only way that information would be admissible is under the rules allowing "character" evidence, but admission under those rules is limited usually to traits such as truth-telling or deceit. Courts have barred litigants from cross-examining witnesses for crimes such as sexual assault because those crimes do not involve truth-telling or deceit, no matter how immoral or reprehensible such crimes may be. Stupid and crass blog posts do not reflect on truthfulness or untruthfulness, and Zuckerberg’s lawyers probably would be able to keep those posts out of a trial via motions in limine.
Still an interesting movie, though I understand it takes some liberties with the facts as well as with the law. Hope this helps!
(For what it's worth, I used to write regularly about legal issues in pop culture at the beginning of my legal career. I do not do so on a regular basis now, but I still think about these issues, and I still like to help non-lawyers better understand how the legal system actually works.)
