 | Lori Johnson is an insurance agent for Farm Bureau Financial Services, located at 219 S. Ozark, Girard, KS 66743. She can provide strategies for all stages of life: Vehicle, Homeowners, Farm, Business, Life Insurance, Annuities, Mutual Funds, Disability, Long-Term Care, Retirement and Education Funding, She is your resource for innovative insurance and investment products and services. To schedule an appointment, please call (620)724-4213 or email lori.johnson@fbfs.com. |
Insurance
2011-07-01 08:19:00
Facebook follies - part 1
Question: Can posting on Facebook hurt me financially?
Answer: Social networking Web sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, are growing increasingly popular with young people and adults alike. These sites allow people to reconnect with old friends and colleagues and to make new connections. However, as with most other websites, these sites allow the posting of communications that the poster’s may come to regret. These posts can cause hard feelings and may result in significant financial loss.
In the winter of 2009, a teenager from Oceanside, New York sued Facebook, four of her high school classmates, and their parents for $3 million. The suit accused the four classmates of bullying and humiliating her in a forum on Facebook. They allegedly posted derogatory and false statements about her that were intended to hold her up to “public hatred, ridicule and disgrace.” Whether or not the allegations prove to be true, the teenagers and their parents need legal defense and possibly resources to pay judgments against them. They may look to their homeowner’s insurance policies to cover these costs, but will the policies respond?
A standard policy will probably not cover this. The policy pays amounts for which the policy holder (the insured) is legally liable, plus the costs of legal defense, for bodily injury or property damage done to someone else. The policy defines bodily injury as meaning bodily harm, sickness or disease; it defines property damage as injury to, destruction of, or loss of use of physical property. Neither of these definitions includes saying or publishing something that injures another’s reputation or feelings. Consequently, the policy is unlikely to cover a post on Facebook. The girl from Oceanside did not allege that her classmates hurt her body, made her sick or passed her a disease; she accused them of making her life miserable. The policy does not cover that offense.
Insurance companies may offer special personal injury coverage that can be added to homeowner’s policies. This coverage pays for the insured’s liability for several offenses, including oral or written publication of material that violates someone’s privacy. If any of the Oceanside classmates’ parents have this coverage, their insurance may cover the claims.
Next month we’ll discuss another potential source of coverage providing additional insurance in situations where a loss has used up the amounts of liability insurance under homeowner’s or auto policies.
