Have you always had a secret desire to drain your business’s bank account while having endless dealings with lawyers and complicated paperwork? Do you want to see your life’s work disintegrate while your stress level rises through the roof? If so, do all you can to incorporate these suggestions into your small business’s operations.
Make Claims You Have No Way to Back Up
It is one thing to advertise your services or the product you have designed by touting its virtues; it is quite another to deliberately lie just to get people to shell out money. If you want to get sued, say goodbye to your conscience and discard those pesky ideas about integrity. A prudent entrepreneur who wants to stay out of the courtroom will only make promises she can keep. She would rather be conservative when it comes to product claims.
Always Keep Your Employees Guessing
An owner who wants to protect the longevity and stability of his company will help to safeguard it by ensuring that all rules pertaining to human resources, employee behavior and other expectations are laid out in a thorough, accessible and easy to understand manner. If you want to set the stage for an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit, throw all of those worker manuals and policies out the window. Keep your workers in the dark about your expectations; feel free to terminate them with no supporting documentation. Keep policies vague, and you are sure to become a defendant sooner rather than later.
Take the Fall for a Debt
Let’s say you need to borrow a sum of money in order to buy equipment for your business. A great way to increase your chances of being sued is to personally guarantee that loan with your own home or other assets. If losing your company’s profits due to litigation isn’t enough for you, this method might also help you to be liberated from your personal assets as well. A prudent business owner either would not guarantee the loan or would, at the very least, set a cap on the amount of damages he or she would be responsible for paying back.
People Get Hurt Because of Your Negligence
A terrific way to get to know your lawyer is to end up at the business end of a lawsuit brought on by a negligent act perpetrated by you or one of your employees. You have an infinite variety of options: drink and drive your work vehicle and get into an accident; fail to advertise a slippery floor, resulting in an injury to a customer; let a disagreement with a patron turn into a fist fight that sends him to the hospital.
People who don’t want lawsuits make every effort to run their businesses in an atmosphere that is calm, clean and customer-oriented. Throw these ethics out the window if you want to have your very own Perry Mason experience.
Disrespect Your Shareholders
Acting in the best interest of the shareholders who support the company you run is your legal responsibility. Fail to do so and you might very well get the lawsuit you are looking for. What’s more, the wronged party could go after your personal assets.
If reading this list of suggestions has made you reconsider the wisdom of courting a lawsuit, take heart. Although you can never have an ironclad guarantee that you will be free of litigation, rest assured that there are insurance policies for small businesses that can furnish you with a safety net of protection. That, combined with your own care and watchfulness, can lessen the likelihood that you will lose your profits – and maybe your entire company – to a damaging lawsuit.