"Lawyers are like nuclear weapons. I have to have them because the other guy has them. But as soon as anyone uses them, everything gets fucked up."
Danny DeVito (as Lawrence "Larry the Liquidator" Garfield in Other People's Money)
Danny DeVito (as Lawrence "Larry the Liquidator" Garfield in Other People's Money)
9 comments:
That is SO true.
People wouldn't be so litigious if they knew how bad it gets.
These are no parlour games; people's lives are at stake.
Everyone loses. The goal is to make the other side lose more.
Not necessarily, tulsa. I would redefine it as the goal is to make sure the other side loses more than they are willing to lose, even if that is less than you would lose under the same circumstances.
It reminds me of the most important lesson I learned at college - you never have to be able to win a fight, just be willing to inflict more pain/damage on the opponent than he is willing to take, regardless of the damage he does to you. The immortal embodiment of this comes in the line "We're not going to win this fight, but we're going to come a pretty close second..."
Anyway, this policy worked for Sears for the longest time. However small your debt to their financing department, they would take you to court. The costs to Sears of pursuing a $50 debt was far higher than any benefit, and higher than the harm to the deadbeat. However, Sears pretty soon got a reputation as a lender not to be defaulted on.
Going off in a lot of different directions at once here, Cowboy.
How much damage you suffer, or are willing or able to suffer yourself, often doesn't have much effect on your opponent's tolerance of damage.
And "winning a fight" is precisely THAT: inflicting more damage on your opponent than he is prepared to accept. You don't have to cripple or destroy, you just have to make him give up.
Pursuing a fight when you know you're going to come second is usually a matter of pride winning out over common sense. It's really a struggle to show any advantage in it.
Your final point with Sears would initially appear to be about Pyrrhic victories, victories won at such a high cost that perhaps they should not have been pursued. However, you seem to end up by suggesting that actually Sears was wise (or just inadvertently benefitting from its stubbornness?) in taking a long-term view - that the cost-benefit analysis was not conducted on the basis of individual cases but on the value of establishing a reputation as a tough lender.
I think businessmen often fail to appreciate the importance of perception as opposed to reality in these matters, particularly when it comes to out-of-court settlements. The real key in negotiations of any kind, I believe, is to maximize the PERCEIVED VALUE to your opponent and the PERCEIVED COST to yourself of any concessions that you make, while of course minimizing the perceived value/cost of any concessions that he makes.
Everyone loses. The goal is to make the other side lose more than they are willing to lose.
I agree tulsa, but that is a distinct thing from making the other side lose more, which was your initial comment to which I responded.
ahem... i agree. which is why i modified my original statement....
I incorporated your comments.
granted, I did not explain what I was doing, but thought y'all might assume it.
sorry for any confusion.
Incorporated, stole, it's all semantics. You'll be hearing from my attorney soon!
LOL! welcome, welcome. we can chat over the semantics over a nice cup of tea.
'Losing' - particularly when you're trying to quantify a loss - is a slippery concept. Unless you're talking in terms purely of the value of a cash award, it can be pretty difficult to assess objectively. Even when you can, the capacity to endure a loss is of course relative to its proportion to your total resources. And even when you can quantify loss and the resources to meet it in accurate and objective terms, a subjective element still usually comes strongly into play in determining whether you are willing to bear the loss.
The mismatch that arose between your comments resulted from this ambiguity as to whether you were talking about the absolute value of a loss in litigation or the subjective impact of the loss. Businesses often can 'win' despite having 'lost' or expended far more than their opponent in cash terms, especially when they have greater resources going into the conflict - that's the whole rationale of price wars, after all. The losing party might not necessarily be forced out of business, but they are forced to give up the struggle first.
A favourite phrase that may one day make its way into a full post: "Ceasing fighting first".
This wonderful euphemism for 'defeat' appears on the caption to an exhibit about one of China's losing wars to the Europeans in the later 19th Century in the Military Museum here in Beijing. Apparently, the brave and 'undefeated' Chinese military were betrayed by their government's misguided policy of ceasing fighting first.
Cowboy, you might try to popularize this expression in Washington legal circles - that is, if you ever find yourself having to advise a client to withdraw from litigation.
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