Jeff's Idea Lab Blog

In British Columbia the law states that you have two years,from the date on which you were injured in a car accident, to either settle your case with ICBC or have a lawsuit filed.

So, in theory, you could wait close to two years before hiring a lawyer to handle your auto injury claim. And every couple months someone will phone me from the airport, just before getting on a flight to Cabo, to talk about their case which is 1day shy of the 2 year mark.

Back in the real world , however, the question you have to ask yourself is whether you're serious about getting your ICBC claim properly handled.

Most of the time when someone sees me with a case that's over a year old it's damaged goods.

What do I mean ?

A good settlement or trial judgement is a product of having done things properly throughout the life of your case. For 99.9% of British Columbians that means relying on the advise provided by their lawyer from very early on in the game. And not giving ICBC the opportunity to have their way with them for a number of months.

Besides, any personal lawyer who's experienced at handling ICBC injury claims is going to handle your case on a contingency( percentage )fee basis. Often, the percentage is the same regardless of when you hire that lawyer. So you might as well get full value and hire them early on.

ICBC injury claims are like alot of problems. They don't get solved to your best advantage by being ignored.

NOW !

Social Media has become "mana from heaven" for ICBC. They have people who do nothing but scour Facebook, Blogger and Myspace looking for personal information about people who have made injury claims.

Why ?

Because it's an easy and sometimes very effective way of attempting to dig dirt on someone.

Are they legally allowed to do that ?

There are no legal restrictions on ICBC's ability to access personal information that people post on their social media site.

What are they look for ?

Photos, notes, blogs, etc. Basically, anything which can be used to make it appear that an individual isn't telling the truth about their injuries and/or their ability to work, play sports, party or do anything which they say they can't do.

The trouble here and what most people don't consider is that often there's more to an injured person's story than meets the naked eye. Maybe they were in pain at the time that photo shows them hiking. But the photo doesn't show the pain. Only the hiking.

What should I do ?

If you are using sites like Facebook shut it down. Or at a minimum make sure that everything on your site is "kosher".
But don't stop there. Ask your friends to remove posted pictures of you or comments about you from their sites.

The skinny here is that nothing is truly private online.