How Social Media Plays a Role
As our lives have become more present online, your social media habits can affect how a court sees your situation, especially in a personal injury case. While your case is being deliberated and investigated, you want to be mindful about not posting on social media about your case or your activities that could affect how your case is perceived.
Posting about your case:
- While you may feel like venting on Facebook about how unfair or frustrating your situation feels, you should avoid posting for the duration of your case. Vent to close friends and family instead. Although you may see posting as a harmless action, a court may use it to judge your character, honesty, or even the legitimacy of your case.
- If your injury is work-related, you may want to cull any posts about grievances about your company from your social media. This could be misinterpreted about your intentions and may be seen as just wanting to get money from the company and could be used against you.
- You want to keep documentation limited to paperwork on your injury from the company, your doctor, your insurance company, and your lawyer. Sharing those details on social media can be detrimental to your case.
Posting about your activities:
- Especially for a personal injury case, you want to be very careful about what activities you post about doing online. If it appears that you can do things you should not be able to do due to your injury, this could also damage your case.
- Pictures can be misinterpreted. If you have a leg injury, for example, but post yourself lying by the pool with no context, it could be interpreted that swimming is not an issue for you, although in reality you didn’t swim at all. It’s better to not have to explain a picture than post something ambiguous that could potentially create an awkward situation for you in court.
- Even before your injury, posts that show you played hooky or in any way took advantage of your work privileges could also be used against you.
- Details about meetings with lawyers or court dates should also stay off social media. You do not want to do anything to risk your chances in court.
Be mindful about how you engage with your social media accounts. Do not respond to baiting questions about your injury, even if they are meant well. It’s better to keep all of that information offline while your lawyer works on your case to get you the best possible compensatory result.
