Insurance companies don’t want to pay your personal injury claim. They don’t make profits for their shareholders by paying you top dollar. From the moment you make a claim for a car accident, slip and fall, work-related injury or the like, you should fully expect your life to be under a microscope. So, don’t give information away by putting it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other number of platforms. That makes it public record.
I’ve had clients with claims for debilitating back injuries put pictures on Facebook of the client water skiing on vacation. The worst part is that the client, in fact, had bad back injuries. He was probably trying to enjoy a vacation and fighting through the pain to water ski with his wife and kids. But what he did in the process was give the insurance company a reason to offer him less money. Good luck selling your debilitating back injury to a jury now that the defense will introduce your water skiing pictures.
I respect that people enjoy sharing their experiences with friends, but doing so comes with financial consequences in a personal injury claim. The water skiiing story is bad, but there are less obvious ways to negatively affect your case on social media.
Imagine you post a picture of your car immediately after an accident. You post it with a caption, “My car got mangled!” Your Facebook friend writes to you out of genuine concern, “Omg, are you alright?” You respond and say, “Yes, I’m fine.” By that you probably meant, “I’m not dead or severely injured.” You shook it off that night and went to bed. A few days later, your neck was in immense pain and it had been getting worse. You ultimately find out you have a structural injury requiring surgery. You’ll have $40,000 in medical bills and miss four weeks of work.
Fast forward to trial, three years later. The defense attorney representing the insurance company puts your Facebook post in front of you and asks, “You claimed that you were injured in this car accident, but isn’t it true that immediately after the incident, you were totally fine?” Your words, not his.
The moral of the story is to keep your case off of social media. You’re just costing yourself money!
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