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Fitbit Data Could Make or Break Your Next Case

By Stephanie L. Stenberg posted 07-06-2015 16:19

  

Evidence from social media and GPS has become important in litigation as these technologies have become more popular. Fitbit, wearable technology that tracks your activity, is the newest player in the courtroom. In Canada, a personal trainer introduced Fitbit data to show how her car accident injury drastically changed her activity levels. Although Fitbit wasn’t around when she was injured, her lawyers are using it now to compare her postaccident activity level with that of other similarly situated people to show that she is much less active than other personal trainers her age.

Plaintiffs also can be disadvantaged by Fitbit data. Lawyer Neda Shakoori describes how a plaintiff claiming that auto accident injuries prevent him from physical activity may be discredited by his own Fitbit data that has tracked “every one of his five-mile runs during the past three months.”

Fitbit could be used in more than just injury cases. A recent Atlantic article points out that “wearables data could just as easily be used by insurers to deny disability claims, or by prosecutors seeking a rich source of self-incriminating evidence.”

The more that data from wearables is used in litigation, the greater the chance that people may try to skew the data by giving them to others to wear or shaking them to get a false reading.

On some devices you can binge-watch Orange Is the New Black while seated and, if you wave your arms, your device may log it as physical activity. Even when the devices work as intended, people forget to charge, sync or even wear them.

Data from Wearable Devices Is Being Eyed as Evidence in the Courtroom,” ABA Journal; see alsoData from Our Wearables Is Now Courtroom Fodder,” Wired (“Wearables, by their very nature, can easily be taken off, worn by others, or jostled to create false readings.”).

Fitbit data isn’t a game changer; it’s just the newest way to support your case. Lawyers simply have to adapt their discovery practice to include wearable technology data, just like they previously added Facebook and GPS data. 

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