You have a Facebook page; You tweet; You Instagram – and you have an injury at work.
BEWARE!
Whether you intend to or not – you are leaving an evidence trail. While you may believe what you are posting is just for your friends and family, the information may be discoverable. That is a fancy way of saying you may be asked or required to hand over any information which you posted or shared which, in any way, touches on your injury. That information may be used to create doubt about your injury or your work limitations. It can be used to question your credibility and your reliability as a witness.
It is not likely to be something obvious. There isn’t going to be a ‘smoking gun’ admission that you are faking the whole thing. It’s going to be something subtle. A picture of you dancing at a wedding the day after your knee injury. Sure, your knee was hurting you, but it was just one dance . . . A picture of you and your buddy at the football game (GO HAWKS!) But you just testified you can only stand for 15 minutes . . . ? A picture of you holding your two-year old Granddaughter . . . ‘Look how big she’s gotten!” . . . . . Well, how much does she weigh? Why can’t you return to work at your job which requires lifting the same weight?
It’s not that these activities are a secret. It’s more that defense counsel would never think to ask you about something so specific, without the picture floating around out there. The first thing a good defense attorney does when they get a new case is look up the injured worker on Facebook. If everything is private, he’s not going to see much. Maybe there follows a formal discovery request for social media posting, maybe not. That decision will depend on what’s at stake in any given litigation. But imagine the ‘Ah Ha’ moment when the the postings aren’t private. Or, there is a rich and detailed instagram record of . . well . . everything that you’ve done since the date of your injury.
Social Media is so instant. It is a very contemporaneous record of what you are doing, saying, thinking, and sometimes even feeling.
Some of it is very, very permanent.
WELCH&CONDON 