Hiding Sensitive Information
I'm going to address the question: Is It Ever Okay To Hide Information Or Lie In An Injury Case?
You probably know the answer, the lawyer's always going to tell you not to lie. But there are people out there who are very embarrassed about things in their past or they just are private and they don't want anyone to know anything. Or they think that by not disclosing an old injury or an old accident, it's going to help them or make their case look better.
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Everything Is On Database
This is what I'm going to tell you really quickly. We live in the computer age. Everything is on a database. Insurance companies track all data and they have a joint database where they can access claims, they can access workers comp claims, they can access injury claims, property damage claims, what part of the body, how much money you got, everything, it's all on computers now. So anything that includes criminal history, that includes aliases, it includes old addresses, it includes basically everything about you.
Destroys You And Your Lawyer's Credibility
Moreover, when you're in litigation in a case, half of what they're doing is trying to see are you telling the truth and can they get you to lie on the record. Because if you lie on the record or if they can make it look like you're lying, maybe you just didn't remember something. If they can make it look like you're lying on the record, that can be fatal to an injury case. Remember we're going in front of a group of 12 strangers and a judge who's also a stranger and they're skeptical. They're skeptical about injuries.
You don't just walk in there and they give you money. We have to prove to them that it's a legit case and if they catch you in lies, boy it destroys our credibility, destroys your credibility, destroys my credibility. Makes the entire case difficult or impossible to win. Before you hide anything or before you guild the lily or just not disclose something, if a lawyer asks you something or if you're answering discover you're getting ready for a deposition in your case. Before you hide anything like that, you'd better really think twice. It's always a bad idea to do that.
Attorney-Client Privilege
Instead, what you should do is tell your lawyer about it in private. Everything you tell a lawyer is protected by attorney-client privilege and if you have a bad lawyer they're not going to do anything with it and it might hurt your case. But if you have a good lawyer who's on top of his or her files, they're going to know how to handle the bad piece of information. I always tell people, I don't care what the facts are, if I know the true facts we can put the case together in a way where the jury's not going to hate you. If the first time I hear a bad fact is out of the defense attorney's mouth in opening statements, we have a real problem.
That's why it's always important to tell your attorney everything and just don't hide anything. There's things I've done in the past that I'm not proud of, that I wish never happened. But when it comes to these cases, it's just a trap, it's going to come back and bite you. So just don't do it, no matter how tempted you are.
Interrogatories
Even more common is somebody who didn't remember something and then a few days later, like in cases that are in litigation. There are questions that my client has to answer called interrogatories. I usually answer those with the client over the phone and a lot of them are like "in the last 10 years have you had any accidents? any visits to the ER? any injuries to your neck or back?". That kind of thing. Then a lot of times, they'll be like "no, no, I can't really think of anything", and then like a day or two later they'll be like "oh yeah I had a car accident, I strained my neck, I went to the doctor once and then it got better and I didn't make an injury claim".
However, even something little like that, if we left it out of the records, they can use it. They can impeach you with it. Once I know the information, I know what to do with it and it becomes a non-issue. Even if you remember something after giving a lawyer an answer, you got to tell your lawyer so your lawyer can update that information. I hope that info helps you.
