If you were going to a fighting someone, you would not provide that same person with a weapon. Yet many accident victims hand a weapon to the insurance companies that are defending the person responsible for causing a given injury.
Viewing social media as a tool
Insurance companies use that tool, in an effort to reduce the size of the plaintiff’s compensation package. The insurance company hires an investigator, someone that can review the online information on the plaintiff’s activities. Do those activities match with the restrictions that the doctor has placed on the patient/plaintiff?
Actions to take, to keep from becoming the target of the insurance company’s “weapon”/tool:
• Ask friends and relatives not to tag you in other’s posts or pictures.
• Set privacy controls on your social media sites. Use tag reviews and profile lock as well.
• Reduce your use of social media platforms.
Actions to avoid:
• Do not post any information on your accident.
• Do not delete your social media accounts.
• Do not delete anything already posted.
• Do not share your thoughts on what you might do with any award money.
• Do not post any pictures; you might post a photograph that shows you doing some movement that you have told your doctor you cannot do.
The insurance company already has one weapon; do not give it a second one.
The insurance companies are allowed to hire private investigators. Those investigators can watch the actions of the men and women that have filed claims. In that way, an investigative team can try to catch a claimant doing some action that the claimant’s doctor believes that same patient/claimant cannot do. The insurance company has access to each claimant’s medical records. It can learn what a given patient/claimant has told the treating doctor. Then it can check to see if the observed claimant/patient does some movement that is, according to the medical records, not the type of movement the still-recovering patient can perform.
Beyond that capability, the insurer also has the ability to order an independent medical exam. The personal injury lawyer in Calgary knows that the insurer can use whatever piece of information is provided by the physician doing that exam. So, even if the physician makes a ridiculous claim, the insurance company can use that claim as a reason to limit or deny coverage. In other words, the insurance company can take some actions that a victim/claimant finds it difficult to control. For that reason, claimants should do their best to seize control of any other efforts.
One such effort is the attempt at finding useful evidence on the plaintiff’s social media account. Plaintiffs that make a point of limiting the amount of time spent on such an account can make life hard for the insurer.