[huffmsa]

But the context here are conversation which appear in the court records. So they're either breaches of a civil agreement, or criminal law.

By all means use them in your day to day conversations, but if you expect your messages to ever require interpretation in a court of law, and you don't want a jury to decide what you meant by eggplant, kissy face, don't use emoji.

Or, conversely, if you want to be ambiguous, like say you're a pimp communicating to his prostitutes, emoji usage might work in your favor.

[dragonwriter]

> But the context here are conversation which appear in the court records. So they're either breaches of a civil agreement, or criminal law.

No, the fact that she conversation appears in a court record does not mean it was involved in a violation of any law (and you probably meant civil or criminal law; not all civil cases involve even alleged violations of agreememts—contracts isn't the whole civil law universe.)

Courts may exist to determine if a violation of law occurred, but sometimes the answer is “no”. (And even if it is yes, the specific conversation at issue may not have.)

> By all means use them in your day to day conversations, but if you expect your messages to ever require interpretation in a court of law, and you don't want a jury to decide what you meant by eggplant, kissy face, don't use emoji.

Sure, if that's a major concern, but I doubt that it reasonably is for the sender in most communication that actually ends up in court.

[huffmsa]

No I meant civil agreements, specifically because those are the civil cases the article mentions emojis in the context of court records.

[ipython]

And how do you determine ahead of time with 100% certainty that your communication will not be subject to subpoena and appear in court record?

In a divorce proceeding for example many so called “day to day” conversations will suddenly be open to legal interpretation.

[huffmsa]

Yeah divorce is a sticky situation. And there's no way to be 100% certain. But if a contract or other agreement involving money is the topic of discussion, it's safe to assume that it might be used as evidence.

[icebraining]

I don't think the couple in Israel looking for an apartment ever expected their messages to require interpretation in a court of law. Sure, writing contracts with emojies is probably ill-advised, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

[huffmsa]

They probably didn't, and I know I come from position of legal awareness, bordering on paranoia, but I would never communicate with a potential landlord over anything but phone and email.

And I suspect the Israeli couple didn't think texts were serious, like an email would be. But the court decided otherwise.