The use of social media outlets has been growing exponentially over the last decade. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people log in and post to all different kinds of social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others. But if you take the time to scroll through your newsfeed or review the latest tweets, you’ll find that many people may not consider the consequences of a post. Anyone who has been on the job hunt in recent years has likely been advised to wipe their social media pages or to be careful about what they post so that prospective employers won’t find anything objectionable.
However, the implications go even further. Everyday throughout South Florida, in places like Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Weston, Hollywood, Florida residents are injured in car accidents, slip and fall incidents or other claims involving negligence. Unfortunately, many of these Florida injury victims begin to document this ordeal on social media and continue to do so throughout the process of a legal or insurance claim.
Here’s the problem: from that point forward, anything and everything that a Florida injury victim puts on social media will be used to discredit them. That’s because insurance companies and their lawyers will investigate everything available to them, especially social media pages. Before the advent of social media, they would have investigators follow injury victims around, taking pictures to try and prove they weren’t actually injured. Now many Florida injury victims do the work for them by posting pictures constantly on social media. Then, insurance companies and their lawyers will take those pictures completely out of context and use it to make a lowball offer or deny a claim altogether.
The point is, if you’re a Florida injury victim, you would be well advised to limit your posts on social media. This doesn’t mean that one should delete their Facebook account or anything, but just to be mindful that anything you post on the internet could come back to haunt you. Being injured due to another’s negligence is difficult enough, don’t hurt yourself more by giving insurance companies a reason to limit or deny your recovery at a time when you likely need it most.
The smartest thing you can do if you’ve been involved in this type of situation is to call a skilled, experienced Fort Lauderdale injury attorney to help guide you through the insurance claim and litigation process. This will allow you to put yourself in the best possible position when everything you do could be under intense scrutiny.
For more information on this topic or any other, please contact the attorneys at the Schulman Law Group at (954) 349-3300 or at info@schulaw.com
