Can Social Media Destroy Your Personal Injury Case?

As if personal injury attorneys did not have enough to deal with, social media is becoming a major concern as the age of mass media ushers in unprecedented access to our client’s personal information. Those who make careless comments, discuss their lawsuit, or even tell close loved ones that they’re feeling better if for no other reason than to set their minds at ease could put their lawsuit in jeopardy.

As personal injury attorneys, litigators, and those who understand how the game is played, social media accounts open up what security specialists refer to as an “attack surface”. It is thus always advisable to limit your visibility on social media to the extent possible.

Here, we’ll talk about some of the ways that you can do that.

Set Your Facebook Profile to Private

Setting your Facebook profile to private is a good way to prevent claims adjusters, private investigators, and opposing counsel from accessing your information. Or—at the very least—it makes it more difficult for them to access your information. They may attempt to request information during discovery but they will have to have some idea what they’re looking for with evidence to back up why it’s relevant. They can’t simply go digging through every aspect of your life until they stumble onto something that may call your claim into question.

As your attorneys, we advise you to set your Facebook profile to private so that others cannot use a picture you took in college against you at trial.

Locking Your Twitter Posts

If you’re a Twitter user, you can set your account to private and thus lock your posts from the public view. If your tweets are public, insurance companies and opposing counsel can and will use anything they can to compromise your lawsuit. This includes taking your posts out of context and/or framing them in such a way to hurt your case.

If your posts are locked, however, they will need to subpoena that information which may not be easy.

Social Media Destroys Cases and Sets You Up for Criminal Charges

Just so we’re all on the same page, insurance fraud is a crime. If you are making a claim against another party who is insured and you even so much as exaggerate the extent of your injuries you can be charged with attempted insurance fraud.

If you don’t believe us, there is an article posted on a prominent insurance claims website detailing the best way to force the discovery of your social media information. What you don’t want to do is leave your social media accounts wide open. If an attorney attempts to get that information from you the court will oversee what is and is not relevant to the case.

Your best bet is to lock or even disable your social media accounts if you intend on pursuing a lawsuit. It’s best to do this before you even file the case. This way you force them to push for discovery and that takes the power out of their hands and leaves it in the judge’s.

Talk to a Miami Personal Injury Attorney

The Miami office of Alan Goldfarb P.A. has successfully litigated multi-million dollar lawsuits and recovered millions in damages for thousands of clients. If you’ve been injured, contact us immediately and we can help you recover damages for your injuries.

Resources:

claimsjournal.com/news/national/2018/10/02/286988.htm

digitalspy.com/tech/feature/a552990/how-do-i-make-my-facebook-profile-private/