Social Media Discovery in a Medical Device MDL
Overview
A medical device manufacturer faced allegations that a defect in one of its products could cause the device to malfunction, leading to improper dosing and resulting medical complications. As the case grew into a multidistrict litigation with hundreds of plaintiffs, defense counsel needed a scalable, defensible way to evaluate the credibility of each claim before those cases advanced toward depositions and settlement discussions.
The Challenge
With hundreds of plaintiffs alleging similar injuries, defense counsel and corporate counsel needed a way to look beyond medical records alone. Many of the claims centered on device malfunction causing medical complications, but a plaintiff’s own account of their diet, exercise habits, and health management could tell a fuller story, one that medical records alone might not capture.
Reviewing this volume of plaintiffs individually, without a consistent and unbiased process, risked inconsistent results and would be difficult to defend if challenged later in litigation.
The Approach
SMI Aware worked with corporate counsel and outside defense counsel to define a precise scope for the engagement. Using a 26-term keyword search agreed upon with counsel, SMI Aware’s analysts searched across 500+ social media profiles and other publicly available content for each plaintiff, surfacing secondary and alias accounts that others miss. All findings were drawn from publicly available content. SMI Aware’s analysts never use deception, send friend requests, or access private accounts to gather information.
Analyst search focused specifically on:
- Physical activity, including exercise and workout routines
- Diet and eating and drinking habits
- Lifestyle factors and disclosed medical conditions
- Use of terminology associated with specific medical conditions or references to the management of that condition
Every finding was reviewed by an expert analyst and preserved with source code to secure the digital chain of custody. Using a documented export process, the results could be easily integrated directly into defense counsel’s discovery documentation and relied on as evidence if the case advanced.
The Results
Across 576 plaintiffs, SMI Aware’s analysts found and analyzed 2,900 social media profiles belonging to the plaintiffs. Of the reports produced, 61% contained content directly relevant to the defined scope, ranging from posts about diet and exercise to diabetes-focused blogs, article sharing, and in some cases GoFundMe pages referencing the plaintiff’s condition.
This case-relevant content gave defense counsel a clearer, evidence-based picture of each plaintiff’s circumstances, well beyond what medical records alone could show. Defense counsel plans to use these findings in depositions to help distinguish between credible and questionable claims ahead of settlement discussions, supporting a more consistent and defensible approach across a large volume of cases.
Why It Matters
In mass tort and MDL litigation, the sheer number of claims can make individualized review difficult to scale. A consistent, analyst-led methodology gives defense counsel a repeatable way to evaluate plaintiff credibility across hundreds of cases at once, without sacrificing the rigor any single case would demand. That combination of scale and defensibility is what allows findings like these to hold real weight later in the litigation.
SMI Aware provides analyst-led social media discovery purpose-built for legal teams handling product liability, mass tort, and MDL matters. To learn more about how a defensible social media discovery process could apply to your current litigation, contact our team.
