If you love to use social media, you may want to give it a rest during your medical-based personal injury case. Here are two reasons why you should stay off your personal social media accounts from the moment you decide to pursue a personal injury case in order to be compensated for physical injuries.
The Defense Can Gain Access To Your Media Accounts
To start with, your entire life becomes open to questions when you pursue a personal injury case. The defense counsel can request access to all of your social media accounts, including but not limited to Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and Vine.
That means that the opposing counsel can see the posts that you share, the comments and messages that you send, the photos that you take, and the videos that you make and post online. If you refuse to provide your username and password, the companies that own those sites will be required to turn over the information about your account to the opposing counsel.
Even if you delete material after learning that the opposing counsel has access to your accounts or deactivate your account, they can still request that information from the companies that own and run the sites that you use. Opposing counsel is not dependent upon you to gain access to this information.
Your Words Can Be Used Against You
Your words that you post online are not private. As soon as you post something online, you are making that information public to some degree. The things that you say online, from a casual comment on a friend's photo to posts that you share with all of your friends, can be used against you.
This is potentially problematic, as the opposing counsel could use a post where you say that you are "feeling great" or "having a good day" to show that your injuries are not as serious as you are trying to say they are. Even if you wrote those posts more about your mental health, or just to be positive, the opposing counsel can literally take your words, turn them around, and use them against you.
Not only can opposing counsel use your words against you, but they can also use how much time you spend on social media against you. For example, if you are claiming that your injury is leaving you without a lot of energy and that you are unable to do things, but you are spending 10 hours on social media every day, the defense can argue that you do have the energy to do things based on the time you spend online.
Be careful with social media during your personal injury case; remember, all your activity you use online can be used against you in court.
For more information and help with your case, contact with a law firm, such as Powers Law.
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