Many people believe that a personal injury claim is solely affected by the events that led to their injuries. You got rear-ended and sustained a concussion — end of story, right? Wrong. The insurance company is going to look at your life after the accident, attempting to find any reason to reduce or deny your claim. To prevent this from happening, avoid these all-too-common pitfalls in the aftermath of your injury. POSTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA Twitter and Facebook have become a gold mine for insurance adjusters hunting for “evidence” about your injuries. It’s an easy enough scenario to picture: You’ve been looking forward to a friend’s birthday for months, so despite your injuries, you decide to grit your teeth and make it to their party. You pose for a photo with the group and do your best to look happy. Someone uploads this picture to social media and tags you in it. If the insurance company were to show this photo in court, a jury wouldn’t see the pain you pushed through to be there for your friend. They’d only see you smiling and, by all indications, having a great time. This can devastate your case. NOT STICKING TO MEDICATION People stop taking their medication for many reasons. Maybe the side effects are just too much to bear, they’re worried about becoming addicted, or they found the medicine was ineffective for them. Regardless of the reason, an insurance company will argue that going off your meds is a sign that your injuries aren’t as severe as the prescribing doctor Teen in Legal Trouble? What Parents Need to Know For a parent, there are few things harder than having a teenager charged with an adult crime. You may feel angry or betrayed by your child and scared for their future. You may even start blaming yourself or the people your child spends time with. While these are understandable responses to a very difficult situation, they won’t help your family move forward after an arrest. There are positive steps you can take to work toward putting this gut-wrenching situation in the past. KEEP COOL Despite the rush of emotion that may come the moment you learn your teenager is being held at a police station, the best thing you can do is remain calm. Too often, parents who are upset with their child end up hurting that child’s case, and by extension, their future. Do not waive your child’s rights, agree to an unwarranted search of your home, or order your child to confess. Decisions like these, made in the heat of the moment, can make the legal process far more difficult. HAVE A CONVERSATION Teenagers are, well, teenagers. They’re going to make mistakes and often fail to grasp the full consequences of their actions. As a parent, it’s important you help your child understand how serious the situation Innocent Mistakes That Will Cost You Don’t Hurt Your Own Claim
On an island off the coast of Antarctica, a BBC film crew caught footage of a naughty penguin engaging in criminal activity. In the video, as one male Adélie penguin leaves his nest to search for additional rocks to add to it, his neighbor waddles over, removes a rock from the nest, and carries it back to his own. When the first penguin returns from his search, his neighbor plays it cool, but at each opportunity, he repeats the crime and steals his neighbor’s rocks. While animals aren’t actually subject to legal action, and the Adélie penguin was only behaving according to natural instinct, the fine writers for the blog Legal Grounds point out that the rock thief situation presents an interesting legal case study. By taking his neighbor’s rock and putting it in his own nest, the neighbor penguin committed an act of theft. Theft is defined as “the taking of someone else’s property with the intent to permanently deprive the victim of that property.” In some places, when a thief leaves the scene of the crime, the theft is considered complete. If the thief returns and steals additional items, that could be considered a new crime and result in additional charges. So, since the neighbor penguin takes a rock, leaves the scene of the crime, and returns, he could be found guilty of multiple theft charges. If he’d decided to go big and take his neighbor’s entire nest at once, he might’ve been charged with grand theft. Now, if the penguin who was stolen from had used force to protect his precious nest rocks, the case would be complicated even further. Allowable force is generally limited in cases of theft. To prove self-defense, the victim penguin would have to show there was a threat of force against him, that he didn’t provoke the neighbor penguin in any way, and that he didn’t have the option to escape. From a legal perspective, it was probably best that the victim penguin didn’t use force. EXPLORING THE CRIMES OF ANTARCTIC WILDLIFE Legal Case Study: Adélie the RockThief
For now, we’ll leave the Adélie penguins to their nest-building business and save the legal cases for the human world.
2 | www.alexhernandeztriallaw.com
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