| Most of us have heard stories about fires that have begun mysteriously by themselves. It can happen and they are called spontaneous combustion fires. Which is just a big sounding way of saying they seem to get started by themselves.
Usually, a can of oily rags has been set aside and bursts into flame. Which is why garages and repair shops have procedures for handling oily rags.
A phone call came in the other morning from a reader who owns some laundries. She had read one of our reports some time ago covering one of the rare reports of spontaneous combustions that occurred after a customer had left the laundry. Could the News provide her a copy of that report?
The insurance claim had been made, first to the customers own insurance company, who then made a claim against the insurer of the laundry. All they were asking for was $51,000 for mostly personal health issues. All the bag of laundry was said to contain were towels and rags. It’s hard to imagine what those health issues might be. Pain and suffering perhaps?
In this case, the owner’s insurance company will be her laundry’s defender, and will no doubt want to settle for something less than the amount the other insurer is claiming for costs and for those health injuries.
In this particular case, the attendant on duty talked to the customer when she left the laundry with her wash in plastic bags. She said to the attendant that the dryers were too hot. Some of her articles were scorched.
According to the claim made, the woman returned home, emptied the plastic bags and the articles burst into flame on top of her bed.
The same laundry attendant talked with her again, about three hours later, when she brought along a fireman, who said the dryers were too hot. What does a fireman know about dryers, and are they to get involved in going to someone’s business to investigate for a possible litigant?
And was the whole deal a set up? Who first goes to an attendant to complain about hot dryers, says she had a fire and returns with a semi official witness, prior to making an insurance claim?
This all brings to mind cases where we have reported on laundry owners not having enough of the right kinds of insurance when a fire occurs. We conclude that it’s better to be over insured than be under covered. Insurance is about the last place where saving money is really a smart thing to do.
In issues of the News, we have reported a number of times about laundry owners who bought their insurance on the cheap, and lived to regret it.
In one particular case the owner bought the minimum amount of coverage her lease called for her carrying. A fire totally destroyed her laundry. When she went to rebuild, there wasn’t enough cash to even start the job. But, she had saved all that money in annual premiums for nearly three years. But that was little consolation.
In another laundry, the owner felt premiums too high, and so dropped his insurance. Within months of his deciding to go without coverage, there was a case of a child getting his arm ripped off in a front loading washer. He lost the building his laundry was in, which he owned. He lost his laundry business and even his house.
There is no scientific method for buying a policy to cover your laundry, but there is a need to be thoughtful. Check with several carriers and compare. Which company will give you the best coverage for the most reasonable annual premium. We also suggest that laundry folks buy coverage from people who know about laundry businesses. Not all insurers do.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of being properly insured is to be like the owner above whose -laundry was charged with having dryer temperatures set too hot. All she had to do was call her insurance company. It’s their job to defend the laundry against claims. That is a nice, really comfortable feeling to have.
How to Look at Arbitration Hearings
Almost all equipment sales contracts and most property leases being used in the laundry industry, or elsewhere in business today, call for arbitration in the event any legal problem arises from the contract. The basic reasoning is that lawsuits are expensive and arbitration procedures save money for both sides of a dispute. It still can be expensive, but there are fewer delays than when the sides have to take their case to court.
Arbitration is different from standard litigation in several ways. To begin with, the process is faster, a lot faster. That speed saves everyone money.
The parties to the process agree to a neutral arbitrator who may or may not have a background in their trade or industry.
These are often retired judges or very experienced trial attorneys. Judges use being an arbitrator to “keep their hand in” and provide extra income. It’s neat to watch them work because they know all the tricks and they tend to keep things going by cutting out excess hyperbole from the lawyers.
There are two types of techniques used to get at the truth. In most cases, people will conversationally relate what happened. However, some attorneys ask for witnesses to follow legal procedures. That is to answer questions just like one would in court. This format is agreed to by each side’s attorney in advance.
Think of how you want to be questioned and instruct your attorney to agree to the system you will be most comfortable with. Most of us are business people, and more comfortable being conversational instead of talking legal and thus being restricted. Following a legal style tends to restrict answers, and questions are often designed to draw conclusions that are favorable to the asking attorney’s side.
Discovery, which is obtaining of information by each side from the other can be expensive and time consuming. There are what are called interrogatories sent out by each side, or it’s done by depositions. That is both time and money consuming. It’s done in court cases, but almost never during the arbitration process.
In an arbitration proceeding, both sides gather around a table in a conference room to discuss the facts of the dispute. This is done less formally than it would be in court. There can be something of a fact finding nature to the whole process. Usually both sides are far more relaxed. There is not so much emphasis on following rules and procedures, which businessmen feel is lawyer talk and confusing mumbo-jumbo.
Decisions made in arbitration are handed down more quickly than in typical court cases. Whoever is selected to be the arbitrator is the sole judge in the case. He or she listen to both sides, asks questions to fill in the blanks he or she sees in the case. They then offer a written decision shortly after the sides have rested. There is no right to appeal a decision unless the arbitrator can be shown to have somehow violated the law. Arbitration does really save both parties time and money. |
