Social Media and Lawsuits: Should You Keep Posting?

Posting on Social Media During a Lawsuit

When we have somebody that comes to us and hires us, we don’t tell them to shut down their social media. We do tell them to be cautious because we don’t want to make it look like they are changing their normal daily activities and doing something different because that may look suspicious. If you go from posting on Facebook six times a day to just complete silence for two years before your case goes to trial, it can look strange. We just tell our clients to be aware that what they are posting is going to be read by somebody else and could be used against them. A very important thing to remember is to never ever delete something from social media once they have a case. If it turns out they’ve posted something about the accident or posted something about their injuries, or maybe they posted about something before the incident that might have some relevancy to their claims or their injuries and that gets deleted, the court could dismiss the case and sanction the plaintiff. Even if there isn’t a dismissal, the court can impose a variety of different sanctions and it will never be good if it turns out that a client has destroyed or deleted something. So we always tell our clients, don’t destroy or delete anything on social media, be aware that what you are posting will be read be somebody else and could be used against you and if you want to set your page to private that there is nothing wrong with that, as long as you don’t delete anything.