How-to Guide to Getting Sued

Author: Joel W. Baar
Date: 04/20/2009

Many of our past articles have focused on preventative maintenance, i.e., avoiding a time consuming and expensive lawsuit. For those who want to be sued, we offer the following “Guide to Getting Sued”:
1. Ignore letters; pretend a problem doesn’t exist.
2. Fail to return phone calls; pretend they’ll go away.
3. Blame all the problems on someone else.
4. Tell the other side it’s really their fault.
5. React with anger when the other side proposes a reasonable resolution to a problem.
6. Fail to meet the terms of your contractual obligations.
7. Delegate someone else to deal with the problem, while giving them no power to resolve it.
8. Use excuses whenever possible.
9. “Borrow” others’ confidential information and use it to your advantage.
10. Delay, whenever possible.
We could come up with many others, but we’re sure you get the idea. If you want to avoid getting sued, treat others fairly and work hard, yet reasonably, to resolve any problems that may arise. This will create goodwill among your customers. It may even keep you from having to hire us.