In today’s day and age, with the advent of social media and the constant and ever changing landscape of technology, the world is getting smaller.  Communication has never been so easy… perhaps too easy.

The single biggest pitfall to successfully litigating as a plaintiff is social media.  Defense attorneys and insurance companies use high priced private investigators to perform background sweeps on you from the moment you decide to pursue your claim.  Most often this includes full downloads of your entire social media platform and presence. Defense lawyers will use whatever innocuous post or photos of you to impeach your character, make you look like a liar, so that a jury will not believe you when you say you’re hurt.

Verp & Leddy takes such practice seriously.  We are continuing receiving legal education on cutting edge issues such as social media.  We constantly advise our clients on this issue. We:

• Warn out clients that their social media posts will have an effect on case;

• Tell our clients to take down social media posts – BUT make sure to preserve any relevant ones;

• Tell our clients to change privacy settings on all social media platforms; and

• Tell our clients not to accept friend requests from anyone they do not already know.

• In a New Jersey car accident lawsuit entitled Robertelli v. New Jersey Office of Ethics, 224 N.J. 470 (N.J. 2016), the plaintiff’s Facebook was initially public, but changed to private. The defense lawyer directed his paralegal to “friend” the plaintiff.  The paralegal did so and did not tell plaintiff who she was.

The plaintiff filed a grievance with the New Jersey Ethics Committee and the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled the investigation should go forward.  The New Jersey Ethics Committee found that the defense lawyer had committed the following ethical violations:

• Communication with represented person

• Failure to supervise non-lawyer assistant

• Conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, misrepresentation

As a result, plaintiffs now have protections from the abuses of over-aggressive and unethical investigation of their personal information online.  But, in order to fully protect yourself you need aggressive representation from before your case is even filed.

Contact the firm to schedule a free consultation today.