Why The Legal System Allows Businesses To Become Targets
I wanted to talk about something that was on my business brain and wanted to share it with you. So if you have been hiding under a rock for the last month or so, you don’t know about this situation that happened. But there was a young lady who was attending a nightclub in Atlanta, Georgia and she was pretty much on live on Facebook the entire time of her having fun and doing whatever she was doing. And then she wound up being in a situation where they’re saying, or she’s saying she was sexually assaulted; raped and it was all on live video. I don’t know what the situation is. I’ve seen some of it. Some of it is pretty graphic, but some of it you can’t really see and you can’t really tell. But here’s what I wanted to talk about regarding this situation. I’m not here to declare that she was raped or she wasn’t. That’s not what I wanted to talk about. But what I wanted to talk about as a businesswoman and as an entrepreneur, my gripe with the legal system and how some attorneys target people and businesses for the sake of the dollar. Now this young woman has obtained counsel and her attorney is suing the nightclub where she was allegedly sexually assaulted.
I do not agree with the nightclub being sued and being held legally responsible civilly, to have to pay her money because an individual that paid their money to get into this club just like she did and just like everyone else did something that was wrong. I don’t care if this was an event that former president Barack Obama was attending or Michelle Obama or whoever that is of a high caliber and they didn’t have enough security there to secure and make sure that adults are going to act like adults and not animals. I don’t believe that the business should be held responsible for the actions of that one person. I believe that person should be held responsible for that. And I think at the time of this video, this person has been charged and has been arrested. And unless that person could be, uh, held civilly responsible in terms of monetary damages, which he could be I don’t believe that she or her attorney should be going after the nightclub. She can sue this guy, in civil court and press criminal charges. She could get a judgment against him. She might not be able to collect on it because he doesn’t have any money. He doesn’t have two dimes to rub together, but she still could get a judgment.
But she is going after the entity that has the most likelihood of having money, having insurance, having the ability to pay money, whether it’s through a settlement or going to court, going through the whole process and having a judge or jury find that the club is civilly responsible when having them to pay damages. I don’t think she should be going after the club, but unfortunately we live in the Sue-S-A (My nickname for the USA) I’ve called it that for years because if you don’t know, I was a legal assistant for 12 years and I got out of the field for many reasons but the fatigue of people suing for this and that got draining.
I’ve been an entrepreneur since 2006 and I’ve always had a gripe with the legal system when it comes to things like this, because I’ve seen a number of things come across my desk when I was a legal assistant, someone attending a party at a friend’s house (a friend, mind you, not a stranger), they slipped and fell. They sue the friend who’s the homeowner so that they could collect on their homeowner’s insurance policy. I get it. Those things are in place, but I never agreed with that. I never understood why things are set up that way as to not have people take personal responsibility for their own actions. It really is set up in a way where adults do not have to take personal responsibility for their own actions or just, you know, saying, you know what, it was an accident. I’m so sorry that it happened.
Let’s pay for your doctor’s bills and move on, but for you to trip and fall at someone’s house, you may have busted your knee and you might have a doctor bill of four or 500 bucks and now you want 15,000. I’ve never agreed with it.
So now this young lady is going to sue this nightclub. I watched some of the press conferences that the attorney had, and I’ll be honest with you, I laughed at it a little bit. I didn’t laugh at the victim. I actually was laughing at the things the attorney was saying because the attorney was basically not saying much about the offender, the alleged offender, everything had to do with the nightclub, how they were negligent, how they didn’t have enough security there. They shouldn’t have allowed this man to carry this woman out of the nightclub. Like, I just didn’t understand it.
I was laughing at it because it was almost like he was just arguing his case in front of an invisible judge because it was just the media and local media and press that was there at this press conference, but it was all to try to convince others and himself that they have a very viable case. She’s probably going to get some money. You know, companies like this, they have insurance policies. They probably get sued a lot, but the reason why I wanted to talk about it, because as a businesswoman and someone who’s been in business for many years, the bigger you get, and the more known you are, the more you become a target by others who don’t want to take personal responsibility for themselves and they’re just looking for a quick come up and I just don’t think it’s cool. In my industry, we have what’s called general liability and professional liability.
Now as the owner of my business, I have insurance policies in place, but all of the service providers who are also licensed in their own right to provide beauty services, they’re responsible for having their own liability insurance. So if someone were to come against my business saying that they received a beauty service and it caused them harm and they want to sue me and they get a copy of my insurance policy, it clearly states that the business is not responsible. The person who’s providing the service is responsible and if they don’t have liability insurance, I mean having liability insurance is not a requirement. It’s just a really great idea to do it. Then they legally can’t come after me. They can try it.
But I had someone tried to do it some time ago and it didn’t get them anywhere because when they requested a copy of my liability policy, I sent it into them. I sent it to their attorney and there was no followup after that because there really was no case; not the mention the person was lying (but that’s another blog for another time).
But that is why I wanted to talk about this. There is no reason, in my opinion, that they should be suing the nightclub, but you may think otherwise, you can respectfully disagree. I’m not here to talk about the victim or what she went through. I’m talking about the fact that they’re going after the nightclub civilly to get money for something that someone else did to her that was a patron in their business just like she was.
Beauty, Blessings & Prosperity,
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