Eat toast in bed - go to sleep with crumbs

In two mediations recently, I ever so gently broached the subject of responsibility.

The first mediation was a construction defect case, the second - a joint venture dispute.

In private with the claimant party in each case, I wondered out loud what measure of responsibility they might factor in for their part of the dispute they now found themselves consumed by.

I explained this may be important when evaluating any proposal on the table later in the day.

In the construction defect case I enquired what that measure might be - on the basis that they had accepted the cheapest tender by far from an outfit that turned out to have a sorry history in this town - sure from their perspective the builders were cowboys - but they could have found this out had they bothered to enquire prior to contacting.

In the JV case it was more along the lines - what would they factor in for their own decision to partner with someone who was perfectly honest and competent, but just ended up not to be a good fit for them?

The responses were interesting.

The construction people resisted the exercise; the JV people were, it turned out, angry at themselves for a rare lapse in judgement and happy to learn (and pay for) a lesson that would stand them in good stead for the future.

As they said, a little harshly I felt - 'if you lie down with dogs - you get up with fleas'.

... crumbs or fleas. Hey, I get it.