It started out as a racial harassment suit when two Lebanese-American contractors brought suit against their employer, and their immediate supervisor and the company decided to hire one law firm to represent both parties and mount a joint defense. Unfortunately, when the company hitched its fate to the supervisor’s defense it severely limited the defense strategy.  All they could say was that it didn’t happen.  There was no way for the company to distance itself from a rogue employee and the case quickly turned into a nightmare.

The ”it didn’t happen” strategy did not sit well with the jury.  The California Superior Court held for the contractors and awarded them $11 million in compensatory damages, TWICE as much as they asked for.  They also said the defendants acted with malice and THAT opened the door to big buck punitive damages.  The company was slammed with $50 million in punitives and the supervisor $56 million.

While the judge did reduce those amounts he still upheld the jury’s message.  The company “showed no remorse” wrote the judge.  “It’s trial strategy was to deny everything, and this was not believable.”

When you mess up you need to fess up.  It’s that simple.  It’s part of the power of apology.  Unfortunately, decision making psychology and ego can trip us up and prevent us from seeing what is obvious to a jury of our peers.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 8:35 am and is filed under Business Blind Spots, Costs, Decision Making. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.