It is time to get honest here. Insurance agents may be wonderful people and the products they provide may be some of the greatest necessary evils that we have in our lives, but don’t ever fool yourself into believing that your insurance company is your friend.
Insurance companies are businesses that exist to make money. Plain and simple, that is their sole reason for being. Your agent may be a friend, but trust me: in no way is the company he represents worried about your well being, if it is going to affect their bottom line.
That is why one of the largest investments that an insurance company makes is hiring the best investigators and lawyers to keep money in the company’s pocket and out of yours.
Your attorney’s job, in a personal injury case, is to play dolphin and protect you from these sharks. You have to do your part to help though. If you stick your foot in the shark’s mouth there won’t be much that the attorney can do to keep you from getting bit.
To that end, here is a short list of some of the most common, social media, mistakes people make in a personal injury case and how they can be used against you.
Data, Data, Data
If you think the NSA is into data mining, they have nothing on the insurance industry. They have learned very quickly how to dig into every possible source to discover anything that might be damaging to your case. Here is what you don’t want to have on your social media accounts.
Posts of you showing off– If your social media account has videos of you riding wheelies down the road or generally behaving in an unsafe manner, it might look really cool to your friends, but it is like handing a defense attorney a loaded gun to blow holes in your case. It would be too easy for the defense attorney to make a convincing argument that you have a history of reckless behavior and are, at least, partially to blame for your injuries.
Pictures of you partying or working after your injury-There is nothing wrong with having a good time, but if you have posts or pictures of you dancing or drinking with your friends it is going to be difficult for your attorney to prove pain and suffering or that your injury is debilitating.
By the same token, if you have social media content talking about cleaning up your yard, working in the garden, or even wrestling with your grandchildren, defense attorneys will seize this content as proof that your injuries are minimal or fake.
Posts talking about your condition- It is only natural for our friends and families to want to know how we are doing, after an injury and for most people; it is natural to want to reassure them we are going to be OK. This is fine, but don’t use your social media accounts to do it.
You have to remember that the lawyers working for the insurance companies are experts in making much ado about nothing. It is what they are trained and paid to do. You make innocent comments like “Great day today, no pain” or “Went back to the doctor today, expecting full recovery” and when they are finished twisting it around you could very easily end up looking like a crook trying to bilk them out of money.
If people really want or need to know how you are doing, use the telephone or have them visit.
Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become such an ingrained part of our lives that we use them without a second thought. Some have even reached a point where they feel a need to post their entire lives, including what they are eating, for the world to see.
What many, too easily, forget is that there is no such thing as privacy on the Internet. Once something is posted, it takes on a life of its own. You may have your security set at friends only, but that doesn’t mean that all of your friends do. Insurance companies will be checking your friends’ profiles looking for posts from or about you.
If you have suffered an injury due to someone else’s negligent behavior, a good personal injury attorney will do his best to get you a fair and equitable settlement. However, you must do your part. This means being very conscious of everything you say and do in any public forum, whether it is on-line or in the street; the sharks will be sniffing for blood in the water.