Social Media Evidence and Workers' Compensation Claims: Best Practices for Claimants and Defense Counsel

Description

When an employee files a workers' compensation claim, the insurance company and defense counsel spend significant resources investigating the facts of the matter. These investigations include conducting extensive social media searches where it is customary for users to share thoughts, videos, and photographs, among other things, in their social media accounts.

For employee claimants, the use of social media could be problematic where posts may contradict the facts of their injury claims. Further issues arise when claimants delete posts that may be relevant to their claim, resulting in spoliation of evidence.

On the other hand, defense counsel should be careful to use appropriate search methods when conducting investigations and understand the admissibility requirements when using social media evidence to refute a workers' comp claim.

Listen as our expert panel discusses the use of social media evidence in workers' comp claims from employee and defense perspectives. The panel will offer best practices including advising clients on the use of social media when they have made a claim and determining when and how to conduct social media searches to collect admissible evidence.