On 5/6/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
This is a Eureka! moment for the industry. The little guy has always known that the costs of legally recovring for damages to the broken window caused bya a rock at the hand ot the neighbour's brat are always far more than the actual damage. Taking such issues to court are costly even if you win.
Industry has known this for years. After all a fair number of those stones were thrown at company buildings.
In some cases this has lead to specialist industries. For most companies chasing up bad debts might not be worth it which why the debt buying industry is doing so well.
The big change is that previously the little guy couldn't hurt you very much. The kid cost you only one window one person failing to pay up wasn't a problem for big companies.
But now the little guy can so what do you do? Well you can try and make the little guy not want to hurt you but there doesn't appear to be a practical way to do that. You can try frightening the little guy but there are so many of the darn things that doesn't appear to work either.
Your final option is to reduce the cost of legal redress. There are various ways this could be done if you are prepared to accept a reduced win rate (and in the US with no loser pays system that is possible).