Ever heard the phrase “Making a mountain out of a molehill”? If you want to stop an avalanche, you have to start from the top and work down. In the world of personal injury suits that means you have to stop a problem before it becomes a very costly one.

Obviously, the best way to prevent a personal injury suit is to ensure you minimize risks that can make you vulnerable to negligence. But if an accident happens, you can prevent a real headache and some severe and significant costs by learning to deal with difficult people right up front.

Avoid A Personal Injury Suit

Even if something isn’t your fault, being taken to court can cost you a whole lot of money. Sometimes it is just better to play nice and avoid being taken to trial, even if that means swallowing your pride a little and kowtowing to someone even if you don’t exactly want to. These are strategies that will help you deal with difficult people and potentially avoid that mountain.

Control your emotions

When someone is threatening you, especially if you know you aren’t wrong, your first instinct may be to fight back. The problem with difficult people is, the more you make your stand, the harder they work to take you down. If you want to stop something from getting out of hand, you have to separate emotions from the situation. Taking the time to calm down and reduce any emotions that you might be feeling will help you to be rational and hopefully get the other person to be the same.

Assess any assumptions you are making

Before you react to anyone who is threatening you with a personal injury suit, it is important to assess whether you are wrongly making assumptions about the situation. Some people are completely unaware that they are difficult and that the way that they are speaking to you or approaching you can be seen as threatening.

Instead of assuming that you know how a difficult person is feeling or what their intentions may be going forward, try to take any ascribed thoughts or motivations out of the equation. Assess whether you could be reading threat where there actually isn’t any, so you don’t inadvertently up the ante and make it all worse.

Listen

When a slip and fall lawyer is being difficult, it is very tempting to try to shut them out and not listen to what they are saying. But with difficult people, the harder you try to shut them up, the louder and angrier they will become. If you just stop to listen and try to be empathetic, then you will show them that you have good faith to rectify the situation or address their concerns. That is a great way to stop someone from retaliating because they feel as if you don’t care about what they are saying or how they feel.

Consider approaching the situation differently

Every person you encounter, difficult or not, is going to respond better to differing forms of communication. If you want to stop someone from waging a personal injury suit against you, it might take a different communication style than you are used to. If it is someone you know, then having a calm, in-depth conversation may be the best way to handle it. If it is a stranger, then trying to approach it in a calm and rational manner might be the way to go.

Don’t be abrupt but do get your point across

Nothing will put someone on the defense more than you being on the offense. The key to dealing with a difficult person is to speak clearly so as not to be misunderstood, but don’t be abrupt. It’s a hard and fine line to walk; it means that you don’t have to be aloof, but you do have to be direct in a nonthreatening way. Don’t leave any room for misinterpretation, but also don’t apply threat or pressure to the situation.

Learn when to fight and when to give in

If you are dealing with a difficult person, sometimes it is just better to give in and move along instead of fighting them. If they have medical bills, then just pay them instead of having it blow up into a million-dollar suit. Whether you agree with them about what happened or not, it doesn’t make sense paying millions of dollars defending yourself for a $400 doctor’s visit.

When dealing with a difficult person who is threatening a personal injury suit, the way that you treat the situation may mean the difference between an expensive court case or a one-day ordeal. If you handle it the right way, things could go your way.