Legal Question in Civil Litigation in New York

The online conversation can be used as evidence if you can properly authenticate it. Even an oral agreement would be sufficient to create an obligation. The only problem with an oral agreement is that a person can lie about it. In your case, you have some evidence of the obligation.

If you have to go to court, you can authenticate the e-mail address or IM by printing the e-mail and printing out other e-mails or IM messages from other occassions. The more messages you print out from the person, the more creditibility you have that the person who sent your the promise to repay is the defendant.

(Also licensed in New York)