Can Posting on Facebook Hurt My Missouri Worker’s Compensation Claim?

This is Missouri Worker’s Compensation Attorney Jason Krebs and in today’s video we thought we would share something that we’re seeing more and more frequently in Missouri work comp cases and that is the negative impact social media could have on your Worker’s Compensation claim.

Most people today are on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, maybe some others that I’m not familiar with and it’s okay to look at these things. But where the problem comes in is when you’re posting things after your workplace injury.

These things are out there for not just your friends, coworkers and family to see, but also the insurance company, the defense lawyers, your employers, people that quite frankly, probably shouldn’t be seeing some of these things.

Most folks put positive things on the internet. They don’t put all their problems out there for the world to see. Sometimes this is inconsistent with what you’re claiming in your workers’ compensation claim. So if you’re claiming that you’re permanently and totally disabled while you’re out deer hunting, or down at the lake, or water skiing, these things are inconsistent.

Even though you may have your account settings on private, that doesn’t mean that the insurance company’s lawyers aren’t going to be able to get at that through an order from a judge and you can’t take them down. Once you put it up, if you take it down or destroy evidence once your claim starts, that’s called a spoliation of evidence and there’s a lot of case law that’s not real positive for people doing that. So it’s something that you don’t want to do.

So the best advice is just to stay off of it. It’s okay to look, but just don’t be posting anything while your claim is going. If you have any questions, we do offer a book to injured Missouri workers. You can give us a call at (800) 345-0535 or (417) 883-5886. We handle cases for Worker’s Compensation claims throughout the state of Missouri. Thanks for watching and best of luck.