Tracy

>>Not a very good analogy IMHO.<<

You mean insensitive/inappropriate or not applicable? If the former, remember i am a foreigner ;-)

As for the rest of it; yesterday I settled a longstanding dispute for my company by offering a monetary settlement. This thing had dragged on for 18 months with both sets of lawyers gleefully escalating and perpetuating the thing. By the time I got involved, the legal costs exceeded the disputed sum. Stupid- the purpose was forgotten in the thrill of the fight.

There was a time when I adopted the stereotyped "sue the b*stards" approach. However, I learned that this is an incredibly expensive approach and it can distract companies fatally. It just isn't worth it.

So now I expect my lawyers to advise me how to settle with minimal cost. I don't want huge p*ssing matches that will at best yield a Pyrrhic victory or at worst cost shareholders a fortune. The above dispute was pointless because any chance of supplier or purchaser achieving benefit was siphoned away to the lawyers.

Perhaps this has been the way of it in business, but there is a groundswell of behaviour from company principals asserting that we want to take a pragmatic, fair approach to disputes and settle them before Court, even if the financial amount seems excessive/inadequate and sticks in the craw. We do expect our lawyers to advise against pursuing the matter if it will inevitably cost more. Only vexacious matters will proceed to ensure that we don't provide incentive for spurious claims.

JVP will be a lawyer soon. Hopefully he will prove adept at solving matters with as little conflict, dissention, distraction and cost as possible. I just thought that apologising and/or cooling his dispute with SB might be something he could take in his stride.