Understanding The "Crocodile Defense"

Understanding The "Crocodile Defense" Maybe it’s a slip-and-fall claim or someone who make the false assertion that you sold their unit for non-payment in contradiction to the law. Regardless of the problem, a smart move is to adopt the "crocodile defense". In this Self-Storage University podcast we’re going to review what this means and how you can use this theory to better your odds of prevailing

What is The Self Storage University Podcast?

Welcome to the Self-Storage University Podcast, where you will learn the correct way to identify, evaluate, negotiate, perform due diligence on, renegotiate, finance, turn-around and operate self-storage facilities. And your host is a partner in one of the largest real estate portfolios in the U.S. with nearly $1 billion of holdings, Frank Rolfe.

We live in a very litigious America. We have more attorneys in the US than all the other countries in the world combined. You may be very fortunate to live your entire life without ever having any legal issue, but that's not always realistic. And when you do have a legal issue, sometimes the best thing you can do is to adopt the attitude and the actions of the reptile known as the crocodile. This is Frank Rolfe, with the Self Storage University podcast. We're going to talk about what's known as the crocodile defense. Now, what is the crocodile defense? What does a crocodile do that's unique? Well, when a crocodile wants to kill its prey, it's in a life-or-death battle with another animal or maybe it just wants to have lunch or dinner, it doesn't attempt to kill the animal. What it does is it grabs the animal, goes on the bottom of the body of water, lake, stream, river, and simply keeps rolling around over and over and over until the victim dies. So, if the crocodile wants to grab a deer as a tasty entree, it'll grab the deer and then just hold the deer basically underwater, rolling over and over and over and over, knocking all the wind out of the deer, knowing that the deer will drown. It's much easier than trying to figure out how to kill the deer, grabbing the deer. So, simply, it takes the exhaustion of oxygen to always win.

Now, how do you overlay that onto a legal issue in a Self Storage facility? Well, let's assume someone has a slip-and-fall claim at your property and they want to get you all excited. You get a call from a personal injury lawyer saying that, "Mr. Stevens fell on your asphalt and hit his knee and now he's unable to go through his regular job functions, unable to ride the bicycle that's so important and vital to his well-being and mental health", and it's all your fault. And then, they're gonna want to hit you up for some kind of immediate payment or immediate action on your part. The worst thing you can do is to quickly run with that. Now, we're big believers that the best thing you can do when you have issues is to try and settle them on the front end. So, I'm not talking about those cases where things can be easily remedied just with a fast response without it ever exploding into a legal issue. What I'm talking about here are cases where it's gone beyond that, where now someone is theoretically going to sue you or take some kind of legal action. And if you look at the way the playing field works in those cases, what always works for them is when it moves quickly. They always want to railroad you. They want to cause as much pain and suffering as they can early on because they realize that works best for them.

If they drive you crazy, if they can rattle your cage and scare you, they know that gives them their best option to derive the most money they humanly can. But your side of the equation is bettered by doing the crocodile defense, basically slowing everything down and punishing them with the exhaustion of their resources, both time and money, because that puts them in the weak position and makes them want to settle or end the case. Now, normally when you have any kind of claim at a Self Storage property, assuming you have good insurance, which you definitely should seek to obtain, you'll turn that over to the insurance company and the insurance company will handle it. As you may know, if you've ever had a car accident or anything, the insurance companies move very slowly because they too know the benefits of the crocodile defense. And they know the slower they move, the more likely the plaintiff is to lose interest or their attorney to lose interest and just want to settle for a smaller amount of money.

But on the onset, of course, they go to the insurance company, guns a-blazing, threatening all kinds of pestilence and other problems. But the key item is as long as the insurance company says, "Okay, well, you know, these things take years to resolve", it just sucks all the enthusiasm right out of them. In the event that you don't have insurance to handle whatever the claim may be and you're on your own, again, you need to replicate the insurance company's process. You need to move very, very slowly 'cause time is always your ally on the defensive side and it works against the person who's the plaintiff. So at all times, what you should simply do is follow the law and realize that the way the law is engineered, it takes a long time for there ever to be a resolution. If you've ever had a criminal justice class in college, you probably know that most all cases when it comes to civil litigation are resolved outside of a court. If every case went to court, the court system would collapse under the weight. I think it's something like 1% of all cases actually ever go to trial. It's very small.

In the interim, most issues are either dropped or they are settled. And you, as the property owner, you have a much better chance of attaining a settlement, a low amount settlement, or even it dropped completely simply by using time as a weapon, by slowing things down, by letting events unfold as legal channels would allow, but not let anyone railroad you or try and move you quickly into where you don't need to be. So, the bottom line to it all is when you have any kind of legal problem, whatever the case may be, don't let people push you. Don't let people try and speed you up, speed up the process because they know that's their best shot at success. You instead need to replicate that good old reptile, the crocodile, slow things down completely, and let people often run out of money or time as they seek, falsely or not, to get whatever they want. You're going to find if you slow it down, you typically will prevail.

Now, I am certainly not a lawyer and don't dispense any legal advice. And what I'm telling you here is not intended to be such, but instead just to give you my opinion as an adult of watching what's gone on in America during the time it's become the litigation capital of the world and what I've seen work and does not work from real life experience. And as with most things, whenever you've got any issue, you wanna be slow and methodical because typically that works the best. When you've got a problem, whatever the case may be, simply relax, slow down, seek the advice of a qualified attorney who knows what they're doing, and let the system work in its own way. The legal system in America takes very, very long amounts of time. There's no question to that, but do not let people try and accelerate the process. Don't let people try and artificially speed things up, because for you as a storage owner, that's rarely the right path. This is Frank Rolfe with the Self Storage University Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.