Use Of Social Media Evidence At Trial

Social media evidence can be instrumental in challenging the credibility of personal injury plaintiffs. Where a party claims to be injured, disabled, or suffering emotional trauma from their involvement in an accident, a plaintiff may be discredited through photos, videos, messages, and usage patterns on social media platforms. In Sports Liability cases, social media from before the accident may be useful for expert analysis where inadequate training, coaching, equipment maintenance or other such allegations are made. We recently employed many such social media-sourced videos in our expert reporting on a Sports Liability case to show that the athlete had received significant progressive training on the skill in question prior to the injury event such that the injury was not the result of any negligence by our client. A few of the popular platforms for locating useful evidence include Facebook, Instagram, VSCO, Twitter, TikTok and LinkedIn.