The Associate's Three Requests

Request 1 - refuse. Identifying yourself as billing staff to extract protected health information is deception to obtain records. It exposes you and the firm to fraud and health-privacy claims, and it can taint the entire investigation. Appointment dates are obtainable lawfully: patient-authorization release, a subpoena routed through the firm, or the plaintiff's own disclosures in discovery.

Request 2 - refuse absent written consent from plaintiff's counsel. A lawyer may not communicate about the subject of the representation with a person the lawyer knows to be represented, and Tennessee's Rules of Professional Conduct attribute an investigator's contact to the retaining lawyer. You are the lawyer's agent; showing up at her door is the firm's contact. With counsel's written consent, a meeting can be arranged - and it should be documented in advance, with agreed conditions on recording and on the statement's form.

Request 3 - refuse. A fabricated profile is deception, violates the platform's terms, and creates impersonation exposure if the persona resembles a real person. Courts and bars have treated pretextual friend requests as sanctionable conduct.

The response to the associate: state the refusal plainly, in writing, with the reason, and ask for a lawful alternative. Do not simply go quiet - a silent refusal gets read as obstruction, and a written one protects you.

Viewing genuinely public posts does not require permission, and the fact that a plaintiff posted something publicly is not itself off-limits. But 'public' resolves only the access question.

You may: obtain the image through a lawful, non-deceptive view; capture a screenshot showing the URL, account name, post date, and capture date; preserve the image file with its metadata; and record hash and capture notes so the account and image can be authenticated later.

You must also:

• Verify identity. An account is not a person. Confirm ownership through photographs, cross-links, or other corroboration before the image goes in a report.
• Date it. A rock-climbing photo without a reliable date may predate the injury. An undated photo proves nothing and can backfire badly when the plaintiff produces the original timestamp.
• Not interact. No likes, comments, friend requests, or follows from any account that would reveal or alter the view.
• Disclose it. Put it in the report with the provenance noted so counsel can make the production decision. Counsel cannot weigh a photo they have not been told about.

The photograph may be valuable. Unverified, undated, and undisclosed, it is a liability.

Refuse, and record the refusal.

An investigator's report and case file are business records. They are discoverable, and in litigation they will be produced or described in a privilege log. Omitting material investigative steps creates two problems at once: counsel is deprived of the information needed to meet discovery obligations, and the omission itself becomes the issue - a file that shows a photo but no record of how it was obtained invites an accusation of concealment.

The division of labor is clear: the investigator records what was done, what was found, what was not found, and how; the attorney decides what to produce and how to characterize it. An investigator who filters the file to protect the attorney has not helped the attorney - they have removed the attorney's ability to make an informed decision and left them exposed.

Practical steps: write the memo documenting the full activity including the refusals, deliver the file with the photo and its provenance, and confirm delivery in writing. If the instruction is repeated, escalate to the supervising partner. Candor and documentation are not obstacles to good investigative work; they are the product.