Court of Appeals Puts Unnecessary Quotation Marks Around “Facebook”

Okay, so we don’t usually write about family law cases here at Abnormal Use, and it’s been a while since we wrote about events from the state of Nebraska. Yesterday, while perusing cases mentioning Facebook, we stumbled across In re Interest of A.W. & L.W., No. A-13-540 (Neb. Ct. App. Feb. 25, 2014), a recent case in which the court of appeals found “that the evidence clearly and convincingly established that termination of [the father’s] parental rights was warranted pursuant to [the relevant statute] and that termination was in [the children’s] best interests.” Yes, this is a case involving a father’s appeal of the trial court’s termination of his parental rights and the appellate court that affirmed that decision.

Chiefly, the case concerns the frequency of the father’s contacts with his children – or the lack thereof. This being the modern age, some of those contacts occurred via social media. Here’s some excerpts from the opinion itself:

After moving to Las Vegas, [the father] claimed that he attempted to maintain contact with his children through his uncle’s “Facebook” account. However, according to [the father], 2 weeks after he moved, [the mother] learned that [the father] had been using the uncle’s “Facebook” account and blocked the uncle from her and the children’s “Facebook” accounts. [The father] made no other attempts to contact his children during the time that he resided in Las Vegas until he moved to Larchwood, Iowa, in 2012, at which point he had two visits with his children: a 2–hour supervised visit on March 31, 2012, and a 1 1/2–hour therapeutic visit on January 4, 2013, supervised by [another adult]. [The father] did not see his children after the January 4 visit, despite his requests to have visits.

[The father] claimed that he did not contact his children while he was in Las Vegas after [the mother] blocked his uncle’s “Facebook” account because he thought that [the mother] had a protection order against him and he would have to contact his children through her. During the time that [the father] was in Las Vegas, [the mother] did not receive any communications from [the father], his friends, or relatives regarding arranging visitation with the children, even though [the father] had [the mother’s] e-mail address which was known to [the father] prior to his move to Las Vegas and remained the same. Further, [the father] did not send the children any letters, cards, or presents during that timeframe.

…

[The father] first contends that the county court erred in finding that he had abandoned his children pursuant to § 43–292(1). He contends that he did not abandon his children for the relevant 6 months immediately prior to [the mother’s] filing of the complaint for modification, which requested termination of his parental rights, because he continued to pay child support and attempted to contact his children through “Facebook” during that 6–month time period.

…

[The father] admits his efforts at maintaining contact with his children from November 2010 until March 2012 were minimal. He testified that he attempted to contact [the children] through his uncle’s “Facebook” account for about 2 weeks after moving to Las Vegas, but then he claimed that [the mother] discovered he was using the “Facebook” account and blocked his uncle from her account and the children’s accounts. [The father] admits that after the initial 2 weeks that he was in Las Vegas, he did not contact the children but claimed that he did not make additional attempts to contact his children for 1 year because he believed that [the mother] had a protection order filed against him.

Nothing extraordinary there, right? Certainly, it’s not unusual for references to Facebook to make their way into litigation, particularly family law cases, where the parent’s everyday decisions and lifestyle may be at issue. Most of us communicate using the Internet generally, or social media specifically, and a case analyzing one’s communications will likely stray into Facebook, Twitter, and the like.

But here’s the thing: It’s 2014. Why is the court of appeals placing scare quotes around the word Facebook? Isn’t Facebook such a prevalent and prominent website that we can now refer to it without quotation marks? By our count, the court mentions Facebook seven times in the opinion, and each time it does so, it places unnecessary quotation marks around the company name. Why?