When emotions detrimentally influence legal disputes and rows it is usually the employee who is too invested in the dispute to make cool, rational, sensible decisions concerning their issue or problem.
Usually.
Occasionally, however, you come across an employer who is too emotionally invested to do the right thing. He or she will be an employer with what I call a “throwback” attitude about employees.
Her view is that to climb down in the face of a dispute with an employee, even though she may be completely in the wrong, will be seen as weakness. And will send out the wrong signal to the other employees.
This employer will have a view more suited to the 1950s or 60s, or earlier, when the master/servant relationship was a real thing and when the employee/servant’s job was to do his master’s bidding.
This attitude causes significant problems nowadays. And can lead to catastrophically bad decisions when the same employer is confronted with a raft of employment claims from an employee.
For her attitude-this old fashioned, outdated, antediluvian attitude-could put her at significant risk of losing claims that should be compromised, not fought.
But this outlook is difficult to shift and has been ingrained over many decades.
Don’t let your emotions cloud your judgment when it comes to legal disputes.
It makes no difference whether it is a right of way dispute, a boundary dispute, a row over the sale/purchase of property, an employment dispute: park the emotions and colour and deal with the facts and the risk.