• 18
  • June
    2010
Even in cases where it is very clear that someone else is at fault for your injuries, the insurance companies and their lawyers will always fight you about the amount of your damages.  As an ordinary element of these damages, most people become restricted from physical activities, which they can, and should, be compensated for. It is well known and expected that insurance companies hire private investigators to spy on the injured claimant in the hope that they will catch the injured person engaging in physical activities that show that the person isn’t really as injured as she is claiming. Every once in a while this tactic works for the insurance company, but most often it doesn’t because the injuries are legitimate. The technique that is gaining momentum, however, is spying on the injured person’s online cyber life. More and more, I see insurance lawyers showing up at depositions with print outs of  My Space pages and serving discovery requests for Facebook  and  Twitter postings. Obviously, the intent is to show a jury that you’re not really as hurt as you are claiming to be. In a recent California case, a man was injured in an accident with a U.S. Postal Service truck and claimed that his life had been and will be affected until the day he dies. Due to his injuries, he said he couldn’t engage in bicycling, painting, or other vigorous activities. He was seeking a settlement of $2.5 million. A federal magistrate, however, only awarded him $297,000.00. It seems the judge was swayed by Facebook and My Space postings where the Plaintiff made jokes about things like he was getting frustrated while painting because his arm hairs kept getting caught in the paint. The Plaintiff said that his posts were merely jokes. The Court, however, found that the various posts were inconsistent with the Plaintiff’s claims of injuries and didn’t believe the posts were merely jokes. Clearly, it was a very poor and costly decision for the Plaintiff to make any such posts in such a public forum. In today’s online environment claimants and plaintiffs should be mindful of just what their posts might cost them. If you have a situation requiring legal representation for injuries due to the negligence of others, contact Corless Zinober FL personal injury lawyers at 866-969-2889.