There’s a lady named Jillie Willie who puts out a blog that is full of colorful, cheery, creative recipes and process for lively food. She calls her place “Kitchen Bliss.” It is all kind of fun and enticing in its own unique way. The precise and practical way Jillie makes use of the kitchen and spoons is not unlike what a lawyer does when setting up a dispute resolution or section 32 settlement agreement. What I mean is, there is a time and place for creating beautiful food and for explaining legal process in a plain way. Maybe you just added some cayenne pepper in to the soup and it turns out that after you taste it you don’t like the heat? Well, without even thinking it through, you’ll add a bunch of sugar to sweeten things up, but then it turns out you’ve messed up the soup again because now it is too sweet… Ahhhh… if I had just read your recipe for the soup, I would have left out the cayenne to begin with and saved myself the trouble of figuring out what to add to fix it once it was ruined. That’s kind of what happens when a settlement agreement is drafted without all the relevant facts and the scope of the final agreed resolution is not understood until it’s too late.
There are lots of parties involved in a settlement agreement; ultimately they all have to buy off on the deal before it’s final. But in addition to the parties to the lawsuit, there also are other third parties that can be impacted by the bargain that is struck and that sometimes gets lost in the mix of it all. I’m talking about things like liens, subrogating payee rights, etc. If you signed the kitchen agreement (or settlement agreement) without reading it HYPOTHETICALLY, who are you to complain about the soup, microwave, or juicer that the plaintiff purchased? This morning there was a bright sun that gleamed right over my head and reflected the contents of the morning meal with such vivid colors that the pot seemed like a deep jewel-toned masterpiece, as if the Goddess of Light herself had laughed down from above upon the reappearance of spring. Oh, yes, the morning was nothing less than splendid!
I am not saying this is a recipe for a bad settlement agreement. There is nothing wrong with a well colored, thick, homemade consomme. What I’m talking about is a section 32 settlement agreement that has terms or limitations that are not understood and explained plainly before it is signed. The outcome of your settlement can be impacted by the tiniest mistake and the smallest change to a sentence. And, funny as it sounds, you probably will not know that your attorney mixed cayenne and sugar until the pot has cooled down and is irreparable. It is not bad that the settlement agreement is written in legalese. There really is nothing wrong with all that jargon that is in print, because the truth is, most people do not know what it means and it just needs to be explained plainly.
Sometimes a lawyer has to put the kitchen apron aside for a moment and just put on the doctors coat to get a diagnosis of what the overall issue is in the dispute, of what the parties REALLY want to have happen, and of how best to package it all up. When it is all explained at the time of the process the client is less likely to wind up stuck with the leftovers of a settlement you maybe didn’t want or think you were getting when you signed it. So, the shortcut to the warm soup of your dreams is to know all outcomes and have the expectations set before you act. Or, in other words, read your agreements before you sign them.
The Scott Pricket Law Firm PLLC helps plaintiffs and defendants settle their legal matters, both large and small. You can check out our article on section 32 settlement agreements to gain an understanding of why these types of documents exist and how they may help you if you have a legal case that you want to settle.
For more information on legal agreements, you can visit Wikipedia’s page on contracts.