In an increasing number of situations, insurance companies are hiring private
investigators to go out in the field and stake out potential claimants'
homes to follow them around and take digital visual recordings (usually
still called videotaping) of the activities of the potential claimant.
Who is a potential claimant? Anyone that has been involved in a collision,
that was not their own fault. A person that has suffered injuries in such
a collision will have a legitimate claim for compensation. The size or
amount of such compensation is directly related to how badly the person
has been injured, and how those injuries have affected the person up to
the present, and into the future. It should be easy to see that if a person
has not been injured they should count themselves lucky that they were
not, and get on with their lives without presenting an injury claim. On
the other hand, if a person has been injured, depending on the severity,
then they may very well, and have the legal right to, present and pursue
a claim for compensation to offset and make up for the effects of such injuries.
Insurance companies and/or their defense lawyers have a goal of minimizing
the amount that the insurance company has to pay out on claims. It is
simple arithmetic, the less they pay out, the more money the company makes,
and the bigger the year end bonuses are for their employees. In pursuit
of minimizing the amount they pay out, they want to minimize each and
every claim. That includes your claim. As mentioned earlier, one of the
things they are doing to reduce the amount paid out on claims is to get
secret video of the claimant doing things that could be construed or considered
inconsistent with the physical or mental injuries that the person is claiming
that they have received as a result of the collision. Such activities
are called sub-rosa investigations, and each claimant or potential claimant
should be aware that such intrusive surveillance could be occurring.
This is not being brought out here to, in any way, encourage nor condone
someone committing fraud! People should not receive compensation and should
not present a claim if they have not truly been injured. To do so is against
the law, and more importantly, it would be ethically and morally wrong.
The reason that I'm bringing this to the readers' attention is
because many, many, times the sub-rosa video does not tell the whole story.
For example, a mother may be suffering with a back injury, one that affects
her life in most every way, and one that might lead her to tell someone
that she can't lift her small child like she used to. Later, she may
be in the yard, and she sees her small daughter fall on the walkway, and
the child begins crying. The mother, quite understandably, rushes over
and picks up her daughter up off the ground to console and comfort her.
The snooping investigator gets video of her lifting up her daughter, and
then later the insurance company or their lawyer presents it in an effort
to down play her injuries by damaging her credibility, in essence, by
calling her a liar. Does the video show the WHOLE truth? Of course not,
but that doesn't bother the insurance company in their effort to increase
their yearend profits. Also, the video doesn't capture the aftermath
of the activity that the person under surveillance suffers with later.
A person may be shown doing some modest automobile repair because they
can't afford to have a mechanic perform the service, and they need
their car to get to their job. The video shows the person bending over
their car and reaching into the engine compartment to remove or replace
a cap. How is it, that with a bad back, they can bend over so far and
reach under the hood of the car? The only conclusion it that they don't
really suffer from a back injury, and probably never did, because we know
they can't be trusted. What the video doesn't show is the grimace
on the person's face while they're performing the repair. What
the video doesn't show is the after math. The video doesn't show
the person suffering even more just a few minutes later, and for the next
couple of days, because they had to do the repair. But they had to do
the repairs so they could get to work, make money, and take care of their
family. The video doesn't show any of that.
What else is interesting is that the insurance company never reveals nor
uses any of the video that is consistent with, and does demonstrate that
the claimant is really injured.
There's a bottom line here, and that is quite simple. If you're not hurt, don't say that you are. If you are hurt, be aware that the insurance company might possibly stoop to having someone follow you around and stake out your home in an effort to "catch" you doing something that later they'll use to try and show that you weren't really hurt.
If you believe that you are the subject of a sub-rosa investigation, then call my firm at 909-927-5359 immediately for representation! As one of the leading catastrophic injury firms in California, I can help protect your rights to get compensation. Contact us today!