Ride the Lightning

Lawyer Lies to Court and Is Undone by Instagram Photos

May 8, 2018

As reported in Above the Law (and many other places) Lina Franco, a New Jersey attorney acting as local counsel for a pair of plaintiffs seeking to file a class action over alleged labor law violations, missed a November 23, 2016 deadline to file for conditional class certification.

On December 9, sixteen days after the deadline, Franco filed her motion along with a letter explaining that she missed the deadline because of her mom's medical emergency that sent her unexpectedly to Mexico City.

On December 12 and 13, 2016, Defense counsel objected to Plaintiffs' late filing of the motion, stating that Ms. Franco's public Instagram account revealed that Ms. Franco was not in Mexico City when the motion was due on November 23, 2016. Plaintiff was in New York City and then Miami, Florida during the entire time she claimed to be in Mexico City because of her family emergency. In an accompanying declaration, the Defense attached screenshots of the Instagram photos as exhibits.

Franco's December 9 letter explained her absence on a family emergency in Mexico and came with an itinerary noting that she had a flight to Mexico City on Thursday, November 21, 2016. To quote the court: "However, November 21, 2016 was indisputably a Monday, not a Thursday." She rather weakly replied that she had been in a "tailspin" because of her mother's heath and exercised poor judgment.

She was fined $10,000 and has said she would not contest the fine. That was the first smart thing I heard her say. But I'll bet she has filed away the fact that public social media postings that contradict a document filed with a court is probably never going to have a good outcome.

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