This article describes one way that insurance companies find out information to use against you in your injury claim in our modern age...and it's called Facebook. This article describes one way that insurance companies find out information to use against you in your injury claim in our modern age...and it's called Facebook.
Personal Injury
Premises Liability: The Slip and Fall
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Attorney
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Your Insurance Company is Addicted to Facebook!

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 think Facebook is unrelated to your accident claim. Right? Think again.

There have been several court decisions over the past 18 months in Ontario where an injured victim has been required to allow access to, and preserve, his or her Facebook profile for review by the insurance company'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 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.

You do not want to inadvertantly add the claims examiner or defence lawyer as your "friend".

Brenda Hollingsworth and Richard Auger are lawyers representing accident victims in Ontario, Canada. Their law firm is Auger Hollingsworth, located in Ottawa. They are the authors of "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.
©2009 Carroll & Carroll, P.C., All Rights Reserved, Reproduced with Permission
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