Yesterday, while I was taking my daily break, someone kept ringing my doorbell. I have one of those devices that lets me see who's at the door and an app on my smartphone that lets me answer without opening the door.
The man at the door identified himself as an officer of the court and said he had some papers for me, which I could see in his hand.
"Aha," I told myself, "must be another lawsuit." And I answered the door and retrieved the paperwork. And sure enough, an angry former client had hired an attorney and is ready to sue us.
Now normally, back in the old days, this kind of stuff would get me upset. But it's happened so many times over the last 26 years that I almost feel like something's wrong when we're not in litigation about something.
And of course, my calm about these things comes from the fact that I now have some experience under my belt. Out of about 20 lawsuits, I think we've lost only two. In one of those matters, our driver had pulled in front of an oncoming motorcycle and the man was seriously injured. We ended up paying damages to him, as we should have. I believe we should have won the other one we lost and felt that the court had made a bad decision. But life isn't always fair when it comes to things like lawsuits.
And a lot of times just because you win a lawsuit you don't feel like you won. And that's because the cost of the litigation is about the same, win or lose. We just won a case that went to the Arizona Supreme Court that cost us over $20,000. The guy who sued us, did so from prison so his fees were very minimal. All his lawsuit cost him, as far as I know, was of some of his time. And I'm sure he has plenty of that these days. And the other cost of being in a lawsuit is that it takes our time away from our mission of helping addicts and alcoholics change their lives.
One of the mysteries of life is that people come to us asking for help and then when they don't like the help we give them they sometimes sue us. Go figure.
Click here to email John
