Cellphones and Their Implications for Your Personal Injury Claim
Considering the fact that over 90% of American adults now own a cellphone, it is no surprise that cellphones and other smart devices are increasingly playing an important role in the success, and failure, of personal injury claims.
This increased involvement includes more mundane things like video recordings of accidents, to more intrusive things like insurance companies compelling injury victims to share GPS and chat history data from their own devices.
Today, we will discuss how cellphones and other smart devices can help you make successful recoveries in personal injury claims, and how and when the data contained within your own devices can be compelled to be disclosed, and how this disclosure may potentially harm your personal injury claim.
Wayne, NJ Personal Injury Lawyers Discuss “The Benefits of Cellphone Data to Your Claim”
On the bright side, the increasing prevalence of video being taken from cellphones and other smart devices can often mean that there is a video recording of your accident somewhere.
This kind of firm evidence goes a long way to helping you and your Wayne personal injury lawyer to demonstrate exactly what happened and how you were injured, and many times how and why the responsible parties should be found liable for negligent or reckless actions.
Beyond cellphone videos, especially for things like motor vehicle accidents such as car accidents, truck accidents, and motorcycle accidents, there can also often be traffic cam recordings or security camera recordings of your accident, all of which can greatly help you prove fault, and ultimately secure full and fair compensation in your personal injury claim.
Paterson, NJ Injury Attorneys Discuss “The Drawbacks of Cellphone Data”
On the other hand, cellphone data, specifically the data contained within your own devices, can potentially harm your claim as well.
For example, if you are claiming that your injuries leave you unable to enjoy a day in the park with your family, but GPS data from your phone puts your phone in a park, insurance companies will gladly jump all over such inconsistencies, and claim you are exaggerating the extent of your injuries, or even lying about them altogether.
In additional to GPS data, insurance companies may also be able to compel you to share chat logs with friends and family if they believe those logs are relevant to the case. So if you tell the court that you spoke with your friend about your injuries or the accident in question, your conversations with this friend are suddenly relevant to your case. Again, if there are any inconsistencies between what you are saying to the insurnace company or the court, and what you said to your friend, it can severely damage the success of your personal injury claim.
When Can My CellPhone Data Be Forced to Be Disclosed During a Personal Injury Claim?
As mentioned in the section above, any data the insurance company can prove to be potentially relevant to your claim is susceptible to being forcibly disclosed to the courts.
This can include GPS data, both at the time of the accident and any time after (given it is supposedly relevant to your claim) as well as chat history data for applications like Messenger, WhatApp, Skype, and more.
All of this means that it is more important than ever that you are completely honest with your Passaic County personal injury attorney, as well as the insurance company about what happened, your role in the accident, and the full extent of your injuries and the affects they have had on your life.
Contact Our Passaic County Personal Injury Law Firm Today
At The Law Office of Fredson & Statmore, our attorneys have extensive experience helping injured clients to successfully recover full and fair compensation in personal injury claims of all kinds in towns across New Jersey and Passaic County, including Wayne, Clifton, Paterson, Little Falls, West Milford, and Woodland Park.
Our firm has a clear understanding of the impacts that cellphones and smart devices can have on personal injury cases, both for good and for bad, and we are prepared to guide and advise each of our clients through the entire, modern personal injury claims process to a successful conclusion.
To speak with our legal team today in a free and confidential consultation regarding any kind of accident, your options for making a recovery, and how exactly we can help you to do so, please contact us online.
