Michigan injury victims beware and be smart. Insurance companies act like your best friend in their funny little ads on TV but treat you like a criminal as soon as you make a claim and investigate your background more thoroughly than if you had actually committed a crime.
After an accident occurs or a claim is made, you can bet the insurance company will begin an aggressive investigation that includes researching vast databases where they have access to your criminal history, claim history, employment history, vehicle ownership history as well as the names of acquaintances, friends and fellow employees. More importantly, the insurance companies will hire a private investigator to follow you and take videos and pictures of all your activities. They will also exhaustively investigate your social media accounts and download all your public posts and pictures. They will then attempt to use this information to later persuade a judge to dismiss your case if anything you say or do seems to contradict the videos they have of you or the things you post on social media. Make no mistake, no matter how seriously you are injured, most insurance companies would rather pay a private investigator and their lawyers bundles of money than compensate you in any degree for the injuries you sustained.
In many recent Michigan injury cases, surveillance and a thorough review of your social media accounts occurs almost immediately after you make a claim. We recently had a case where a client was run over by a car and by the time our client was released from the hospital, the insurance company had already interviewed all the client’s neighbors, the investigating police officer and our client’s employer in an attempt to somehow discredit the fact that their insured was negligent and ran him over. The insurance company then conducted surveillance on him 24 hours per day which continues to this day