A woman lost her $823,000 injury claim after lawyers found a photo of her winning a Christmas-tree-throwing competition

[joshrave43]

@ikerepc Had an associate who said she injured her neck etc. At first employers were sympathetic, but she kept pushing the line, she was a very aggressive person. Last straw was her demanding that they pay for someone to do her laundry and ironing of stretchy sports shirts, she was allowed to replace normal uniform of cotton shirts to something with stretch. Then she went on a big event with lots of publicity where she was photographed in the shirts she said she couldnt wear without pain. Photographed many times over a week. Yea.. case closed.

I do agree thought, that people dont understand chronic pain. Pain that is never going to go away or be cured and affects your life every day. They dont understand that you might appear to be fine while doing something, but you know they wont see you for a week while you pay in real terms for a moment of madness or fun.

 

[theprincess97]

@joshrave43 Your last part is so true! I was in a bad car accident on 11/28, and was out of work for 3 months. I’m a teacher and I advise a club that competes next week. So I pushed my self back to work a few weeks ago and I’m in my classroom being held together with pain meds and duct tape. I have to completely structure my day around my pain and managing it. But from the outside….I look fine. The only person who really knows how bad it is is my husband who sees me sleep the whole rest of the day. So when I go to figure out the case, are they gonna be like “well you went back to work?” When this version of me working is pretty much hell.

 

[pilgrim7]

@theprincess97 Exactly, pain meds help me do things that I wouldn't be able to do without them. Do I want to be on pain meds? Absolutely not, but do I want to lay around the house all day not doing anything since I'm the only person that has to get the things done, such as walking my dog, having to go shopping and lifting heavy items, or anything else that the pain meds are allowing me to do, as opposed to not being on pain meds. You'd be surprised what you can do when you are on pain meds.

 

[daughteroftheking2]

@ikerepc Forget having a PI I find so many “injured” folks are happy to put there happy roller coaster photos or spartan race photos all over their public socials and don’t even think theirs anyway that could come back and bite them when they say they can’t work and barely move and I guarantee their attorneys have warned them. Happens alllllll the time

 

[ikerepc]

@daughteroftheking2 I'm friends with an attorney in a pretty big insurance defense firm. They employ someone full-time to scour the social media sites for exactly that.

 

[theprincess97]

@ikerepc A few years ago I was accused of hitting someone’s car in a parking lot and cause I didn’t do it, I went full on PI because I’m not paying for something I didn’t do. I had previous damage on my car but I had no pictures of it. So I retraced my day, contacting the businesses I went to so I could get video of my car with the damage prior to pulling into Walmart (because god help you if you need anything from Walmart in terms of video). I made a comparison diagram of the damage ect because there was NO WAY me pulling into that parking spot could have caused the other drivers damage. Now insurance companies don’t wait for court to figure things out so they fixed the other drivers scratches which pisses me off to this day, but my lawyer was like….if being a teacher doesn’t work out for you, come talk to me about a PI job lol.

 

[keoann]

@ikerepc FAFO.

 

[stormy36]

@keoann More like Throw AFO.

 

[anonymous]

@ikerepc The thing about chronic pain is it doesn’t really limit what you can do, it just increases the price you pay for doing it. I had a back injury that wrecked me for a decade. There was nothing I couldn’t do, but I couldn’t do everything I wanted to do. I’d have to pick which thing I wanted to wreck me for two days. I’d do it, but I’d pay for it.

I could play golf, but I couldn’t play a weekend of golf. I am sure I could have thrown a tree, but I probably wouldn’t have thrown two trees, lol.

 

[monday]

@anonymous Then she should have said that in her claim and not that she couldn’t lift a heavy bag, children or complete daily chores. Lying destroys your credibility

 

[breeze11]

@anonymous She didn't just enter the competition. She won it. She was in better shape than anyone else at the event.

 

[anonymous]

@breeze11 I was recognized as an "elite athlete" by my national Olympic committee but would need three days in bed after a two-day tournament, the second day was always propped up by drugs and physio. You can be in great shape and still disabled, you sometimes just pay a much higher price than others to do the same things. Hard to hold down a job if you need three days of rest after each day of work, even if you do perform very well for that one day.

 

[breeze11]

@anonymous If she can win a tree toss, surely she can hold a job that isn't as physically demanding as throwing trees?

 

[anonymous]

@breeze11 Maybe, but maybe she can only do that job for one day and then needs two hours of physio and three days rest before doing it again. Again, it isn’t about saying “I can’t do this thing” it is about saying “I can’t do this thing day in and day out without making it impossible for me to do other things I need to do.”

 

[mommy2littles]

@anonymous Well maybe she should think about that before undertaking completely unnecessary and potentially harmful actions like tree throwing.

Someone who actually has chronic pain isn’t gonna go risk an episode of debilitating pain for no reason.

 

[knowledgeableindividual]

@anonymous Doesn't sound like an $800k injury then.

I don't know how to put a price on something like intermittent back pain. I also think it's impossible to catch everyone who commits insurance fraud, while also being impossible to police it without occasionaly denying deserving claims. It's a tricky situation that unfortunately gets tested too often due to the "win the lottery" level of money involved, for both victims and lawyers.

 

[anonymous]

@knowledgeableindividual There is a huge difference between US and other jurisdictions in terms on the “win the lottery” mentality. It is hard to get a large settlement in Canada, for example.

My nephew is currently in the middle of a large claim. Car accident, lost the overhead use of an arm. Not a big deal to most people, but he’s a rope access technician, so his whole career has been swinging from a rope in industrial settings. It was a high paying job and he has no other skills. Should he win the lottery? Be forced to retrain and do some menial job he is capable of but hates? I don’t know the answer, but I know the process of dealing with insurance companies for the last three years has left him more broken than the car accident.

 

[taters1]

@anonymous The "lottery" mentality is also a major cause of frivolous lawsuits. I've seen people being sued for a fender bender. A lot of people just try their luck

 

[anonymous]

@taters1 My wife was sued by a guy on a motorcycle who she ran into at a yield sign. He was at the bar where her brother works, bragging about “winning the lottery” when “some bitch in a rental car bumped into me”. Karma got him first; he died a short time after that.

 

[taters1]

@anonymous I mean, hitting a motorcycle with a car is insanely dangerous and that guy could very well have died.

That said if the indemnity he got is disproportionate to his injuries, yup, karma got him.