in this video i want to talk about settlement remorse we all can suffer from time to time suffer
remorse there is such a thing i believe as settlement remorse that is you're involved in a
hearing you're involved in a case and you're acting for either the employer or employee
and the question of settlement or compromising the claim, the proceedings, dispute
comes into being and my client for example might suffer from settlement remorse
in other words they will feel that even though they settled it and they might be
if they are an employer paying out a certain amount of money by way of compensation they may feel
that oh if the hearing had gone ahead we might have avoided this and we might have won however
the corollary is also true that if the hearing had gone ahead he could have gone badly and the payout
could have been even more significantly more now what you're getting with a settlement and
what you're getting with a compromise is obviously certainty in other words you can
accept and know and recognize that the proceedings are an end the claim is at an end it's going to
cost you x you sign an agreement and that's it so you're getting certainty it's a bird in the hand
situation the two birds in the bush situation then is oh if the hearing had gone ahead if the claim
had gone ahead if the court case had gone ahead i would have won more or i would have won the case
and not have had to pay out so much or whatever and that's always something that you need to
weigh up but you never have when you're going to court or to the wrc or to the labor court
certainty so there's always a risk and so you weigh up the potential risk the potential attached
to your case the potential of winning and the factor the risk factor in winning the probability
and you multiply that essentially by what you could have to pay out and you weigh it up so if
you have to pay out perhaps and you've weighed it up in terms of assessing the risk factor
15 grand and if you can settle the case for five well then obviously it's a no-brainer
that you're going to settle for five and whereas if you go for the 15 and you lose
and you pay 15 obviously and you're worse off however if you go for the case
and you let the case come on and you have the hearing and you win well then you don't pay out
anything so you might have avoided having to pay out five so that's the risk reward ratio
but recently i was coming back from dublin and we had settled the case i was acting for the employer
and he had exhibited a certain degree of remorse afterwards and it seemed to be no matter what
was done he would have been remorseful anyway so had we gone ahead he would have been remorseful
obviously if we lost and if we had settled for a lesser amount he would have been happier and so on
but there was a certain element of remorse about the settlement even though in my view it was a
perfectly good deal but it was one that the client my client wasn't coerced into he had a chance
to weigh up the pros and cons and had a decision to make and he was on the table he could settle it
or he'd go ahead and fight the case and he chose to settle there was as i say a certain element
of settlement remorse afterwards and there was the element of oh i should have paid less or we should
have gone ahead but these are the decisions that you make and you will always ruminate
and think about the decision that you arrived at and always wonder was it the right one but
you're better off probably just accepting it making the best decision you can moving on
but ironically i'm listening to a podcast at the moment about hip-hop music
and the intersection between hip-hop and law and incarceration and jail and it's
the intersection of rhyme and rhyme and music and rhyme and punishment essentially not crime
and punishment but rhyme and punishment but in the particular episode i was listening to coming home
from a hearing in dublin the episode was to do with a plea deal that was offered to some of the
young hip-hop guy and um all of his mates took the plea deal plea bargain and to reach getting
seven years or whatever this guy was a murderer actually he had pulled the trigger and there's a
number of murders against him and he was offered though 15 years and he wouldn't take the deal
he wouldn't take the deal he was offered 15 years he went ahead then to full hearing full trial
and he has been jailed for 189 years in new york state so that's you know when you look at remorse
when you look at settlement remorse when you look at being offered a deal and not taking it
sometimes you're right not to take it sometimes it can go disastrously wrong and when you are
experiencing settlement remorse perhaps you should consider that guy who was offered 15 years and
as a young hip-hop gentleman going to court and being prosecuted coming out of prison obviously
after 15 years he's probably going to be still in his 30s he'd still have a life whereas he threw
up that deal refused it didn't accept it went to full hearing and fought the law and essentially
the law won he was as to say convicted and sentenced to 189 years he will never
see the outside of a prison or a correctional center so the next time you might be considering
remorse about a decision you've made or indeed about compromising or settling a wrc claim or
a labour court claim or deal any court claim then if you're experiencing remorse you should consider
the type of rewards that that young fella in new york state correctional center
is experiencing hope you find this video useful i hope you find it
thought provoking and if you do i'd appreciate if you give it the thumbs up down below thanks a lot
you