Navigating social media while involved in a lawsuit requires careful consideration. While it may be tempting to remain active, remember that your privacy is incredibly important during this time. Even if you feel like nothing you post is related or relevant to the ongoing matter, this information can and will be used against you. With over 27 years of experience as a personal injury attorney, I’d like to share how social media can negatively impact the value of your case.
First, it’s important to understand just how far the defense (and their insurance company) will go to find information about you. The answer is: incredibly far! Insurance companies actively and aggressively seek out information with the hope of saving money.
Here is a real-life example of this happening to my client:
One hour before a recent mediation started in a dog bite case, the defense attorney sent me a forty-five page report (yes, 45 pages!) about my client. This report came from a social media investigation company hired by the defendant’s insurance company. That report was comprehensive and thorough (and even a little creepy). It contained things like:
- All of my clients current and past email addresses (even from >10 years ago when she was in high school)
- The current email address of my client’s mother (with whom she lived)
- My client’s current (and even past) usernames for social media accounts
- Vehicles, with VIN #’s, registered to my client and her family members, past and present
- All Facebook posts, even though my client’s page was private
- All posts on social media that my client was tagged in, including Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. These were on her family members’ and friends’ pages
- All Google reviews my client had posted in her lifetime.
So, here’s why not to post or get tagged by your friends —
Social media posts substantially lower the value of personal injury cases because insurance companies take everything out of context.
As an example, in that dog bite case I mentioned above, my client’s mother posted on Facebook that her daughter attended a New Kids on the Block concert with her mother and little sister about 10 days after the brutal attack. There was no picture of my client in the post, but the defense argued that if my client was really so traumatized, she wouldn’t have gone out in the first place. The reason she went was easily explained (her sister had cancer and she didn’t want to break her heart by not going to the show with her), but having to explain out-of-context information raised by the defense is always bad. We would have also explained that my client wore a hat and hoodie to hide the bandages and stitches on her face, but again, the jury’s initial impression would have been that the injuries weren’t bad enough to prevent my client from going to a concert. That lowered the value of her case.
Another example from that same case involves photographs that the defendant’s investigators found of my client online. The scars on my client’s face were so bad from this dog attack that she stopped taking pictures of herself and even stopped looking in the mirror. Why, the defense asked, would she pose for photographs with a professional photographer and agree to be on his Facebook page? Without an explanation, that seems bad. The jury would have ultimately found out that the photographer specializes in taking photographs of injured people and uses photoshop to give his subjects beautiful pictures despite their scars. But that explanation would have come after the defense had already tried to convince the jury that my client was lying when she said that being photographed made her anxious. Those photographs decreased the value of her case.
This is a simple rule to follow. If you have a lawsuit for personal injuries, do not post on social media.
There are no exceptions. The defense will find everything that’s out there and take it out of context to use against you. You will get less money in a settlement or verdict if you appear on social media during your case.
