The Law Office Of David W. HolubThe Law Office Of David W. Holub

The Law Office Of David W. HolubThe Law Office Of David W. Holub

Stop Posting to Social Media

Transcript: Hi, I’m Indiana personal injury attorney David Holub.

Social media is where it’s at these days, but what is social media, really?

Sure, we know the key players like Facebook, SnapChat, and Twitter, but what do we really mean by social media?

A fair way to look at social media is to imagine yourself walking around with a four-sided cardboard box around you. On that cardboard box that you take everywhere that you go, are photos of yourself and other people as well as little messages that people might write down about you and post to the cardboard box. Now imagine that you could never take that cardboard box off, not even to go to sleep at night. Further, imagine that some photos and messages are on the inside of the box that you think that only you can access.

Got it now?

Does it make sense as to what social media really is?

Okay, now imagine that you get hurt in an accident and you have to go to court. When you do go to court, that box goes with you to court.

So when you go to court and sit in front of a jury and testify about how much your knee hurts after it got hit on the dashboard, the jury can see the photos pasted on the side of your cardboard box showing you dancing or playing basketball. In many cases, not only will the jury see the outside of the cardboard box, but in some cases, the court may order you to open up the inside of the cardboard box and show that to the defense and show that to the jury. So all of the things that you think might be private, are now made public.

If you think that all of this would be great for your case or that the defense team will never find information about you, think again. You couldn’t be more wrong. The defense team will search every corner of the internet trying to find things out about you. People even hire themselves out as capable of scouring the internet for information about you for litigation purposes.

They’ll know everything about your Twitter comments about politics, from pictures of you hoisting a beer down at the bar. And as I said, people actually earn a living trying to find this information out about you. And can we really blame the defense team? They want to find out if you’re really hurt, if you’re really losing time from work, or if you’re faking it. Once they have all this information about you they will ask you questions under oath in a deposition or at trial trying to pin you down about particular incidents in your life.

Once they do pin you down, then they’ll spring on you these photographs contradicting what you just testified to under oath. So, you testify that you’re in too much pain to go bike riding? After you do that, they then show a picture of you riding a bike that was posted to your own social media information site. This is why we insist that our clients post nothing about themselves on social media, about the accident, about the injury, or how they’re feeling. Nothing. Why? For the exact reasons that we’ve just outlined.

So why do I share this important information with you?

Well, if you’re watching this video, you probably have questions or concerns about a legal matter, and maybe it’s your own legal matter or that of someone in your family. If so, feel free to give us a call at 219-736-9700.