People take to social media to share pretty much everything – the good, the bad, the ugly, and what should be, the private.
If you are in the middle of a claim, you should not be airing the details about your accident or case for the world to see. By doing so, you are inviting the defense, claim adjusters, and others working against you to diminish or deny your claim altogether in on how to belittle your perspective and what happened to you.
The reasons to be cautious while a plaintiff in the middle of claim are vast, but below I’m going to highlight a couple of the biggest reasons.
Why You Should Avoid Social Media When You’re in the Middle of a Claim
1. Your social media posts do not corroborate your claim.
If you’ve suffered a personal injury and then post pictures of yourself doing an extreme activity, or even something simple but one that the insurance company does not think you should be able to do given your accident, you are gifting the claims adjusters evidence to use against you.
We know you’re seriously injured, but posting a picture of biking, hiking, climbing, or doing any other activity that could be deemed strenuous and contrary to your physical claims can and will be used against you.
2. What ranting says about you as a plaintiff.
Maybe you don’t post pictures of yourself, but you do post rants about how mad you are at the person who did this to you and about what you hope happens to the defendant. Emotionally-charged, vindictive rants will only work against the fair claim to compensation you’re seeking. If you make it look like you’re going after the person who did something to you instead of seeking fair retribution for the accident, it only arms defense attorneys with material to use against your otherwise fair claim.
3. You open your posts up to interpretation.
The less the defense knows about you, the better. Trust me. They are only after what they can use against you. The less, the better. When you post a comment about your accident to social media, and maybe it’s something simple like showing relief that you didn’t invest money in maintaining your car because now it’s totaled, it can be wrongly interpreted as negligent and a certain amount of blame can be assigned to you.
Here’s what they’re thinking: Maybe if you had gotten your brakes fixed or new tires put on you would have been able to prevent the accident from happening. Granted it wasn’t your fault, but it could show a certain amount of contributory negligence. Thankfully, Georgia is not one of the four states (plus D.C.) that recognizes the Pure Contributory Negligence Rule, which essentially says a plaintiff cannot recoup damages if a certain amount of negligence can determine the plaintiff is at fault, even if that negligence is less than one percent.
For tips on how to use social media when you’re in the middle of a claim, I’m going to refer you to a law group, Felton Banks PLLC. Their article covering this topic originally appeared on their blog on November 30, 2017 and is written from the point of view of a North Carolina attorney, where they do recognize the Pure Contributory Negligence Rule.
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