Ross ordered that data to be turned over, while carefully stating that sleep, location, and heart rate data was not relevant and could be redacted. District Judge John Ross said the number of steps the plaintiff's Fitbit recorded was plainly relevant to his claims of severe injury due to a defective artificial hip despite his claims otherwise. Two recent court decisions-one a civil case over an allegedly defective anatomical implant, the other a murder in rural Wisconsin-are the latest in a string of decisions confirming wearables data is fair game and can be pivotal in exposing a wrongdoing or exonerating an innocent person.Īs a rule of thumb, judges are making wearables data subject to nearly blanket discoverability-that is, any party to litigation needs to provide a stipulated amount of data to opposing counsel in preparing for trial if requested to do so. Now courts are overwhelmingly deciding it might quantifiably aid in the quest to arrive at the truth. Of course, the (probably) imaginary beating of the murder victim's heart in Poe's classic tale of intolerable guilt was perceptible only to the narrator but wearables recording heart rate, steps taken, and more are out in the world, real as can be-as is their data. Were he alive today, Edgar Allan Poe might be spinning tales such as 'The Tell-Tale Fitbit.'

The exonerated pdf