As much as you want to prove the extent of your damages in your personal injury case, the defense wants to block you from doing so or otherwise downplay the severity of your harm. There are several ways the defense will go about doing this, including by assessing how quickly you sought out medical treatment and whether you followed your doctor’s treatment recommendations. They could also talk to your friends and co-workers to see if your injuries are as serious as you claim them to be.
But one often overlooked vulnerability is your social media. If you’re not careful, then these platforms could pose a threat to the viability of your claim, potentially even blocking you from recovering compensation altogether.
Social media can provide an effective outlet for our emotions and frustrations. During legal action, though, social media can be aggressively used against you. Here’s how:
- Identifying contradictions: You probably feel safe to freely post whatever you want on your social media accounts. However, these posts could be used to contradict what you specify in your personal injury claim. For example, your claim might indicate that you’ve lost mobility while a social media post shows you playing basketball with your children.
These posts can be taken out of context, too, as viewing them fails to capture the pain that you endured while engaging in the activity portrayed. Given the manipulation that can occur with the use of these pictures, you’re better off staying away from social media for now.
- Spotting problematic statements: You want to place the blame on the defendant as much as possible. But if they have access to your social media, then they might find statements that they can then use to demonstrate your acceptance of fault for the wreck. Again, it’s best to stay off social media, but if you’re going to post there, be careful about what you say.
- Scouring your friends’ pages: Even if you’ve kept your profile page clean, the defense could look at your friends’ posts to see if you’ve commented in a way that they can use to their advantage. Be careful with what you say and post on social media, regardless of where you’re posting.
What can you do to protect yourself?
Although the tactics mentioned above can sound scary, the good news is that you can be proactive in protecting yourself from misuse of your social media. This includes:
- Checking your privacy settings to ensure that only those you trust have access to your social media pages.
- Analyzing new friend requests so that you don’t unwittingly give access to the defense.
- Scrutinizing what you post so that it doesn’t come back to haunt you in your personal injury case.
- Staying off social media altogether so that you don’t inadvertently give the defense ammunition to use against you.
Take control of your personal injury case
If you want to recover the compensation you need, then you must be holistic and aggressive when building your personal injury case. While that certainly includes taking an offensive approach, you can’t overlook the necessity of being defensive, too.
These are issues that your attorney can help you navigate. Hopefully with strong legal arguments on your side you’ll be able to impose liability, recover compensation, and put yourself on the road to a robust and full recovery.