Have you ever had to explain what the above emoji meant to someone?

Last year, there were over 50 cases in the courts that required a judge to interpret more than just the facts at hand, but the meaning of emoticons or emojis.
According to The Verge between 2004 and 2019, there was a significant rise in cases that referenced either emoticons or emojis, with over 30 percent of those just happening last year.

Between 2004 and 2019, there was an exponential rise in emoji and emoticon references in US court opinions, with over 30 percent of all cases appearing in 2018, according to Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman, who has been tracking all of the references to “emoji” and “emoticon” that show up in US court opinions. So far, the emoji and emoticons have rarely been important enough to sway the direction of a case, but as they become more common, the ambiguity in how emoji are displayed and what we interpret emoji to mean could become a larger issue for courts to contend with.

Santa Clara University law professor, Eric Goldman, has been tracking these kinds of references and speculates there are more out there, with many more cases to come.
Goldman recommends in these cases that the judge has the lawyer state specifically what the client saw. This can arise when two different operating systems may see different depictions of the emoji. Another recommendation is the fact-finder actually sees them, and it’s not just described.

EXAMPLE From Room404

In 2017, a couple in Israel was charged thousands of dollars in fees after a court ruled that their use of emoji to a landlord signaled an intent to rent his apartment. After sending an enthusiastic text confirming that they wanted the apartment, which contained a string of emoji including a champagne bottle, a squirrel, and a comet, they stopped responding to the landlord’s texts and went on to rent a different apartment. The court declared that the couple acted in bad faith, ruling that the “icons conveyed great optimism” that “naturally led to the Plaintiff’s great reliance on the Defendants’ desire to rent his apartment.”

Here are some of the new emojis coming out this year. What do you think the judges will say about the “Little Fingers” and their meaning?

Susan Saunders 2/19/19