Surveillance: What Should I Expect?

In this video, I'll be discussing how to handle surveillance by insurance companies in disability cases.

Dealing with insurance companies can be stressful. First, they deny or stop your disability benefits, and then you become aware or suspect that they might be doing surveillance on you.

This is a valid concern: insurance companies can and do conduct surveillance in disability cases. However, this does not mean that surveillance is anything you need to worry about.

As with many things in life, honesty is the best policy. While insurance companies like to paint the picture that disability means locking yourself away in a room and not partaking in any activities, this is not what disability actually looks like for a lot of people. In fact, especially in the case of mental health, many doctors will actively encourage patients to get out and about and socially interact as a form of healing.

Surveillance evidence also only ever shows a moment in time: a glimpse, if you will. Surveillance does not show any work that has gone into getting out of the house, either from a physical or mental perspective, or any aggravation of symptoms that might occur following any outings or in the partaking of any activities. Many clients report that when they go out and partake in activities, they “pay” for it in the following days.

As such, our advice to you if surveillance has been done or if you think surveillance is being done is quite simple: just continue to act in accordance with the advice of your doctors and do not worry about any surveillance.

We would add, from the point of legality, that any surveillance agent must be on public property.

Be very careful about how you use the internet and, in particular, be aware that any websites, postings on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, may be monitored by the insurance company or their lawyers. Think about what you are posting and how such could be taken out of context by the insurance company.

If you have any questions about the information provided in this video, please do not hesitate to contact your Client Services Team at Share Lawyers. We would be pleased to help you.