Preserving Evidence and Social Media in Your Injury Case
After a crash, paperwork and photographs are the last thing on your mind. You are hurting, the insurance calls are starting, and life is still moving. But some of the most useful proof in an injury claim is fragile: a damaged bumper gets repaired, security video gets recorded over, a phone gets traded in. This is a plain walk-through of what to hang onto after an injury in Washington, how to think about your own social media, and why preserving evidence works in both directions.
Disclaimer: This post is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For guidance specific to your situation, please consult with a qualified personal injury attorney.
Evidence That Can Help: Preserve It Before It Disappears
Much of what proves how a collision happened, and how badly you were hurt, exists for only a short window. The goal is simple: keep the original, keep it unaltered, and act sooner rather than later. A few categories come up again and again:
- Vehicles and damaged property. The condition of a car often tells a story about the forces involved. If you can, photograph the damage from several angles before repairs, and think twice before a vehicle is sold, scrapped, or fixed while questions remain open.
- Photographs and original electronic files. Take pictures of the scene, the vehicles, and your visible injuries as they change over time. Keep the original files rather than only a screenshot, since the original often carries date and location information a re-saved copy loses.
- Dash-camera and surveillance video. If you or a passenger had a dash cam running, save that footage right away and back it up, since many cameras overwrite themselves in a loop.
- Text messages and call records. Messages with the other driver, a witness, an employer about missed work, or an insurer can matter later. Leave them in place rather than deleting a thread to tidy up.
- Wearable and app data. A fitness watch, health app, or activity tracker may hold information about your movement before and after the injury, and that data can quietly age out.
- Medical devices and damaged equipment. A cracked bike, a broken car seat, a bent mobility aid, or a damaged piece of gear can be evidence in itself, so keep the actual item where you can.
- Helmets, clothing, and physical objects. A damaged helmet, or torn clothing and shoes from that day, can help show what happened. Setting them aside in a bag, unwashed and unrepaired, preserves that.
Asking Businesses to Preserve Video
Some of the best footage of a crash or a fall comes from a nearby business, a doorbell camera, or a parking structure. The catch is that many of these systems record over themselves on a cycle as short as a few days. If you think a camera may have captured your incident, it often helps to ask, in writing, that the footage be preserved before it is overwritten. Because these requests are time-sensitive, this is an area where getting an attorney involved early makes a real difference.
Social Media: Review, but Do Not Delete
This is the point worth reading twice. After an injury, it is natural to want to clean up your online presence, but please be careful. The central guidance: go ahead and review your privacy settings, but do not delete, alter, hide, or destroy potentially relevant material, including old posts, photos, or messages. Preserve what is there and get advice about it.
Here is the plain reason why. Once a claim is underway, both sides have obligations to preserve information, and deleting content that might be relevant can create a separate problem with nothing to do with the merits of your injuries. Removing a post can look like you were hiding something, even when you were only protecting your privacy, and that appearance can overshadow the honest facts of your case. Better to leave things in place and let your attorney sort out what is relevant. We describe how the other side formally asks for information in our post on discovery and interrogatories, and this is one reason those questions reach into places people do not expect.
Adjusting who can see your future posts is fine, and going quiet for a while is fine too. Erasing the past is the part to avoid.
A Simple Way to Think About It
Preservation runs in two directions: evidence you want to gather because it helps tell your story, and evidence you have a responsibility not to alter or destroy. Both point to the same habit — keep the originals and get advice before you change anything — which is why we raise these choices alongside the broader prefiling considerations to weigh before a lawsuit is ever filed.
Final Thoughts
You do not have to get every detail perfect. The main idea is to slow down before deleting, discarding, or repairing anything that might matter, and to keep the originals. A little care in the first days after an injury can spare a lot of frustration later.
If you are unsure what to keep or how to handle your own social media after an injury, we are glad to talk it through. Reaching out early lets us help you protect what matters before it slips away, and we work with injured people across Washington to make these first steps less overwhelming.
