Social Media after a Car Accident or Personal Injury
On Behalf of O’Malley Tunstall PLLC | Sep 2, 2013 | Car Accidents, Civil Trial, Legally Speaking, Personal Injury, Products Liability, Social Security Disability, Workers’ Compensation
Social Media after a Car Accident or Personal Injury?? Our clients rarely ask whether they should post to their social media (Facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc) after a car accident or injury case — they just do. Our society is obsessed with instantly sharing what we are doing, what is happening to us and how we are reacting to our own lives. In the past year, our attorneys have seen a significant increase in requests in discovery (written requests called interrogatories, request for the production of documents and verbal requests at depositions) for logon information for our clients Social Media and requests that they produce the history of their account. Why would the insurance defense attorney (attorney hired by the defendant’s insurance company to defend them) care if I have 500 friends on Facebook or 1,000 Twitter followers? They don’t. What they are counting on is that many of us share a lot about our lives, but rarely do we share the really ugly parts of our own pain and the shame of having pain and problems following injuries from a collision or injury. Often the best advice is what my grandmother told me many times — don’t put anything in writing you don’t want to explain to your grandmother. That is especially true of pictures. Joe Tunstall, why use a trial lawyer After a car accident our clients may post a picture of their vehicle, but rarely do they feel compelled to place a picture of themselves with no shower, hair messy from lack of sleep due to pain, stressed and frustrated for all their friends, co-workers and family to see. Instead they may post a picture of their next GOOD hair day. Although there is nothing WRONG at all with wanting to show your good day, your best days, to family and friends — the insurance company lawyers know that if a jury sees your smiling face at a birthday party two weeks after the car crash, despite the fact you were in pain when you went, left early after taking a pain pill and didn’t sleep that night — the picture of your smiling face is enough to expose to the jury that you are exaggerating. When you have to explain all the good looking pictures, the only ones you would want to post, even when your in pain and having a tough time, it erodes the juries confidence in your complaints of pain. In Virginia an attorney who was past President of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association was sanctioned for advising a client to remove damaging photos from his Facebook page after receiving a request from the insurance defense attorney to produce the same. article. An attorney cannot assist a client in removing or erasing discoverable material. A client must have the good sense not to post pictures of themselves they would not want to discuss with a judge, jury or their own grandmother. They must also understand that if they tell a jury about all the pain they had for six months in 2011 and the only pictures are of them smiling with their children at the park (good days) and not of them on the couch afterwards sleeping from the pain their credibility will be attacked. If you have questions regarding this post visit us at our own social media where we still only post the good days. @ncpilawyer on twitter and O’Malley Tunstall Facebook on Facebook. Raleigh office of O’Malley Tunstall, PLLC
