Many people do not realize that a social media post can harm their St. Louis car accident injury claim.
It’s usually a good rule of thumb to be very cautious when using social media. This rule applies even more so when you have recently been in a car accident. Although many people don’t consider it, a seemingly innocent social media post can harm your St. Louis car accident injury claim.
Before you go and post to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok, let’s first examine how social media posts could hurt your future St. Louis car accident settlement.
Insurance Adjusters Are Watching
Insurance adjusters are usually quite skilled at what they do, and they have come up with plenty of clever tricks for saving their employers money. Insurance adjusters might attempt to view your social media pages to argue against your claim.
For example, let’s say you are claiming that you badly hurt your leg in your recent car accident. If an insurance adjuster goes to your Instagram page and sees pictures of you hiking a week after the accident, they could deny your personal injury claim arguing that if you are well enough to go hiking, your leg must be fine.
Overusing Social Media Can Be Dangerous
We all know that social media is often used to project an image to the public that is not often the truth. Someone can appear to be living an incredible life on social media, but in reality, be hurting on the inside. This is why you must be extra careful to post on social media if you seek damages for psychological injuries suffered from a car accident.
Opposing attorneys might argue that you are not really psychologically traumatized by your St. Louis car accident based on your excessive or overly positive social media posts. This is not to suggest that you need to post about how traumatized you are all of the time, but it is best to exert caution before posting anything.
Public Record
Never forget that anything you say on social media becomes a matter of public record, whether your account is private or not. Generally, anything you say or post on social media about your St. Louis car accident could effectively be used against you in a court of law.
Avoid speaking about your car accident on social media in any capacity. Take particular care never to admit any guilt.
What You Can Do
The first thing you can do is to make sure that all of your social media accounts are set to private. Although this will not completely protect you, it will make it harder for adjusters and attorneys to find your posts. You should also avoid accepting new followers who you do not personally know.
It would help if you also got in touch with an experienced attorney who can advise you and help protect your legal rights after a car accident. Our experienced legal team is here to help. If you have been involved in a St. Louis auto accident, give us a call 24/7 for a free case evaluation.