If you are involved in a personal injury lawsuit you simply should not post personal information online. Even though most social networking sites give users control over their privacy settings, posting this information creates unnecessary risks that may damage your case.
A judge in a personal injury lawsuit recently told a plaintiff she must give the defendant access to her private Facebook and MySpace postings. See Article.In the lawsuit, a woman sued an office furniture company, Steelcase, claiming she was seriously injured after falling off a Steelcase chair. Steelcase argued that the woman's Facebook and Myspace postings
"reveal[ed] that she has an active lifestyle and can
travel and apparently engages in many other physical activities inconsistent
with her claims in this litigation." For example, Steelcase said Romano's
public profile on Facebook depicted her "smiling happily in a photograph
outside the confines of her home despite her claim that she ... is largely confined
to her house and bed."
The judge ordered
the information turned over stating that it is "reasonable to infer from the
limited postings on Plaintiff's public Facebook and MySpace profile pages, that
her private pages may contain materials and information that are relevant to
her claims or that may lead to the disclosure of admissible evidence."
