Responding to Broad Social Media and Text Message Demands After a Crash

Attorney Answer

You are not required to hand your phone or your social media over to the other driver's lawyer just because he asked. A letter from an opposing lawyer is a request, not a court order. But do not delete anything, do not answer him directly, and give this to your insurer today — under most auto policies, responding to this is their job, not yours.

Take the two halves separately.

First, where the demand comes from. Before a lawsuit is filed, the other side has no power to compel you to produce anything; a demand letter is a negotiating document. After a suit is filed, formal discovery exists, and it is not unlimited: Texas rules confine discovery to matters that are relevant to the subject of the pending action and not privileged, and a party who receives requests that reach beyond that can object and ask the court to limit them. Those are procedural rules I am not going to summarize section by section here, and how they apply to a specific request for social media content or text messages is exactly the kind of judgment a lawyer is for. What matters for you today is that a lawyer asking for something and you being required to produce it are not the same thing.

Second, the underlying claim, which is what he is really building. Even a collision where nobody appeared hurt at the scene can produce an injury claim later. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(a) requires suit for personal injury or for injury to property to be brought not later than two years after the day the cause of action accrues, so the window stays open for a while. Fault is still allocated by percentage: § 33.003(a) has the trier of fact assign whole-number percentages of responsibility to each claimant, defendant, settling person and designated responsible third party; § 33.001 bars a claimant more than 50 percent responsible from recovering anything; § 33.012(a) reduces a non-barred claimant's damages by that claimant's own percentage; and § 33.013(a) makes a liable defendant responsible for only its own percentage, subject to the exceptions in (b).

One warning that matters more than any objection you could make. Do not delete posts, wipe messages, or deactivate accounts. Destroying material that is or may become evidence is treated as a serious problem in its own right, separate from the merits of the crash, and it can hurt you far more than anything in the material would have. The right response to an overbroad request is an objection made by a lawyer, never a cleanup.

What you can do

1. Report the lawyer's letter to your auto insurer today, in writing, and send them a copy. Most liability policies obligate the insurer to defend a covered claim and to handle communications, and nearly all require prompt notice.

2. Preserve everything as it is. No deleting, no editing, no deactivating, including material you think is irrelevant or embarrassing.

3. Do not reply to the other driver's lawyer yourself, and do not give a recorded statement to him or to the other driver's insurer.

4. Ask a Texas attorney — the one your insurer assigns, or your own — whether the requests are within the permitted scope of discovery and how to object to the parts that are not.

5. Keep the crash report or its number, your photographs, and any repair or medical paperwork together in one place.

*Most lawyers offer a brief initial call at no cost, and a few minutes on your specific facts — the exact wording of the letter and whether a lawsuit has actually been filed — is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.*

⏱ Time limits apply. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(a) allows two years from the day the cause of action accrues for personal injury and property damage claims, which is the outside window for a suit arising from this collision. If a lawsuit is filed and you are served, the deadline to respond is much shorter and is set by the papers themselves. When any of these periods started depends on your dates, so have a Texas attorney review them rather than counting from a page like this.