Don't Let Facebook Hurt Your Accident Case
Not just for students anymore, social networking sites like Facebook and My Space are hitting the 30 and 40 year olds, with the boomers not far behind. Even some personal injury lawyers have been known to participate.
You may think Facebook is unrelated to your accident claim. Right? Think again.
Numerous court cases over the last year and a half in Ontario have held that an accident claimant is required to permit access to and save his or her Facebook materials to be shown to the insurer's lawyers.
The right to access this personal information has been considered to be part of the discovery process that forms part of every lawsuit. However, the advent of this new source of potential information about the accident victim's post-traumatic lifestyle has introduced a whole new invasive aspect to discovery.
An individual hired by the insurance company to to surveillance of a claimant will now automatically also do internet surveillance. If, like many people, you use your Facebook profile as a journal or chronical of your day, you could be providing significant fodder to the insurance company. Plus, because of the dynamic nature of the sites, you will not have a record of what you said six months ago on a particular day. However, if that is a day the insurance company was monitoring, the insurance company will have that record and may use it against you.
Using MySpace, or Facebook, the insurer can see your trip pictures, read commentary about your outings or otherwise glean or conclude that you are not affected by the accident the way you claim to be.
The difficulty for injured victims is that there is probably a very reasonable explanation for why you wrote "I danced until dawn" in your online profile. However, by the time you get to trial, you will have forgotten what it was! This admission by you will contrast sharply to the jury who is left to evaluate your disabilities.
Our lawyers ask accident victims not to use Facebook or MySpace. Where using these sites is unavoidable, the claimants must be wary of what is posted. This includes not only their own profiles, but also on friends and family members' profiles too.
Watch for photos "tagging you" too from parties or weddings.
A claims examiner or insurance defence lawyer is not who you want listed on your site as your "friend".
About the Author
Brenda Hollingsworth and Richard Auger are lawyers acting for accident victims in Ontario, Canada at Auger Hollingsworth, located in Ottawa. They wrote "An Injured Victim's Guide to Fair Compensation". To get free copy of this book, contact http://www.ottawalawfirm.ca ; email info@ottawalawfirm.ca or call 613.233.4529.
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