Personal Injury Law

What You Say on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace Can Ruin Your San Diego Personal Injury Case

By Ross Jurewitz

Like many San Diegans, our office has enjoyed embracing the emerging social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and even MySpace (although we do not use MySpace any more for a variety of reasons). In fact, part of our office's outreach to our clients, San Diego, and injured people throughout the United States has been the creation and growth of our social networking presence (you can befriend us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or join our LinkedIn network).

However, the casual ease of posting updates on social network sites can also be harmful. For the last several years, particularly in employment law cases, defense attorneys and investigators have culled plaintiff's social network sites looking for any inconsistent statements, damaging or embarrassing information, inappropriate photos (you know, those drunken party photos you had to share with everyone), and statements about the lawsuit to sabotage the plaintiff's case at trial.

This trend has now become widespread and defense attorneys, investigators, and insurance adjustors regularly farm injured people's social network pages for material to harm them at trial.

First, to the extent that a person making an injury claim is lying or exaggerating to obtain a monetary settlement or to boost the value of their claim, they deserve to be caught and their case destroyed. We have no tolerance for untruthful plaintiffs in our office. If we find that a client has lied to our office, we immediately inform them that we cannot represent them anymore and they should find another attorney. So, for example, if a client tells everyone he can no longer play basketball following a car accident and then posts basketball photographs taken after the accident on their Facebook page, that client deserves to get caught.

However, the above example is not typical. Most people and injured people are honest. Most people do not try to game the system by lying or exaggerating. Nevertheless, the insurance companies will try to take statements and photographs from social network sites to make jurors doubt the injured person's honesty and trustworthiness. While this "square peg, round hole" approach may seem ridiculous and irrelevant, jurors naturally suspicious of personal injury plaintiffs may find these items sufficient to bar recovery.

Full post as published by San Diego Injury Lawyer Blog on March 22, 2009 (boomark / email).