Many of us who are now beyond our teen years are starting to enjoy the novelty and interaction of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. (One of the lawyers at Auger Hollingsworth is hooked! We'll let you wonder which one.)
You may be under the impression that Facebook has no connection to an injury 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 ability to obtain this private information is deemed to be a fair part of the "discovery" process that is a step in every court case. 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 investigator assigned to conduct surveillance of an accident victim will now, as a matter of course, also conduct 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 Facebook or MySpace, the insurance company can review your vacation photos, comments you make about your weekend or anything else that they may use to suggest that you are not as injured as you claim or that your injuries have not affected your life.
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! The jury is left with this admission, by you, to contrast with your stated disabilities.
Our firm has asked our injured clients not to participate in this type of on-line activity. If this is not possible, injured victims should pay close attention to what is included on these sites. 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".
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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.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
