Video Transcript

Most people find themselves in a courtroom or an administrative hearing in one of two ways. Either they initiated the litigation or someone else initiated, and they have found themselves on the side of being the defendant. You may have obtained a permit that your neighbor challenged, or your neighbor may have obtained a permit that you feel the need to challenge, or you may have a dispute that you choose to sue somebody to resolve, or similarly, someone may choose to sue you. If you are in a situation where someone has chosen to sue you, often there's not a lot of choice. You are in the litigation, whether you liked it or not. The determination you need to make is, "How do you want to proceed from there?" Is it something that you feel that is beyond your capability, that requires the assistance of counsel, of experts in the case of technical disputes over environmental matters, or whether it's something that can be resolved quickly through a mediation or simply a settlement.

If you are electing to initiate litigation, it's important to always bear in mind two things. The first one is that timing is everything. Certain claims can expire or grow stale under the law if you let them sit for too long. There are windows of time in which you have to assert your rights, or you lose them. Those windows can be as short as a couple of weeks, and they can be as long as several years. Often, it's important to at the very least consult an attorney to determine what your rights are and to determine when you need to assert them. The worst thing that can be done is to sit and do nothing for a period of time, then consult an attorney, only to find out that it's too late.

Once you've made the determination that you can assert those rights, and you're asserting them timely, the next thing to bear in mind is that litigation can be difficult, time consuming, costly, and stressful. It is not something to be undertaken lightly. It's a significant decision. You should absolutely go into this decision having weighed all the factors, how important the dispute is to you. What are you willing to spend to assert this right or to defend this right? Is it worth it? Finally, do you have the right people assisting you, whether they're experts, whether they're consultants, and whether they are attorneys. To go through the process of litigation, which can be so stressful, time consuming, and costly, it's important to have a good relationship and a good trust relationship with the people that you have brought onboard to assist you with that process.