After your injury, be very careful what you post online about yourself!

If the person or business that caused your injuries has insurance, then an insurance company representative will be assigned to handle your claim for injuries. If the claim cannot be resolved by the insurance company representative, then it may be necessary to file a lawsuit to get you the justice you deserve.

With the advent of the Internet, just about any photograph or information that is posted about you online can be discovered by anyone, including the insurance company. Insurance companies are always looking for information to demonstrate that you are, in fact, not injured, or that if you were injured, you have recovered nicely from your injuries. To this end, insurance companies regularly search the Internet for photographs of you looking happy and healthy. For example, if you post pictures of yourself on vacation at some point in time after you suffered injury, the insurance company lawyer may very well attempt to use those pictures to convince a jury that there is nothing wrong with you, and that you are fully enjoying your life. If a lawsuit has been filed in your case, then the insurance company lawyer may very well ask the judge in your case to order you to give the lawyer access to your Facebook or other social media postings to see what is posted about you. The problem is that oftentimes, postings will not tell the whole story about your injuries. For example, if a photograph shows you on vacation on top of a hill in Hawaii, when in fact you had trouble climbing that hill, the photograph will not communicate the pain and discomfort you had climbing that hill.

Benjamin Franklin once said that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Our law firm subscribes to that philosophy: it is better to prevent avoidable problems with a case in the first place than it is to try to fix those problems later. One way we do this is by carefully educating each client on how to avoid the problem of unwittingly giving the insurance company information that the company may exploit or manipulate in order to damage your case.

For this reason, we strongly advise our clients to give careful consideration as to what they post online about themselves and their lives, after they suffer an injury. It may even be wise to refrain from posting anything at all until your case has concluded.