I've said on many occasions that the most important part of negotiation is the preparation. And here's a little exercise that I think may help in that regard. I recently got an Email from one of my students, who is about to go into a negotiation. And here's the situation she faced, it turned out, just before thanksgiving, she and her husband live in a three story East Rock apartment, and one of the other apartments in her building has a dog. And that dog entered the apartment without their permission and ended up getting into a fight with their dog, and worse than that, ended up biting her husband. The dog was from Germany, and the dog sitter showed us the rabies vaccination information. In our confusion, we thought there was only German on the page and took her word for it, that the rabies vaccination was present. Upon later inspection, the word rabies was actually on there in addition to the German, but we didn't receive copies of the vaccination report, until much later. So, what happened next? My husband went to urgent care and received antibiotics. Later, we researched rabies further and found there could be a risk of my husband getting rabies, which is fatal. So I requested the vaccination documents again from the dog sitter, so we could inspect them further, but we decided to go back to the hospital to get a rabies shot. There's only a small window within which you can receive the rabies' shot before it's ineffective. So going back the next day, we didn't think was an option. The hospital administered a rabies' shot. Later, we were sent the vaccination records and the dog had really been vaccinated. A couple months later, the hospital sends us a bill, which was $32,000. [SOUND] Luckily, we had insurance, leaving us with a deductible pay of only 2,000. So, here they are, about to go into negotiation, to hopefully recover the 2,000. Perhaps even something more. What should they do for preparation? For preparation, I think they should do three things. First, they should understand what the law is. Now you could contact a lawyer, or you could start just by Googling. And it turns out that different states have different rules for liability, when a dog bites. Some states are a one bite rule. That is until he dog has bitten somebody else, the owner isn't liable, cuz you don't know that this is a dog that bites. Other states are zero bite rules, in Connecticut, where this took place, is a zero bite state. And so the owners are gonna be liable starting with the very first bite. The second thing I'd want to know, is what the appropriate medical recommendations are, in terms of getting rabies vaccine. And here, you can go to the CDC website and there's a nice flow chart in terms of what it is you're supposed to do. If you're bit by a bat, or a wild dog, or a fox, then it's pretty clear that rabies shots are called for. But, if you're bit by a domestic animal. It seems that in some circumstances, the right strategy, the recommended strategy is that, you wait to see if the dog itself develops any evidence of rabies. So my student may have been a little bit premature but in the end there's also safe rather than sorry. And then the third thing that I'd want to do. Is really understand the perspective of the dog owner. And perhaps the best way to do that, is to ask your friend, preferably a dog owner friend, to play the role of the person who's dog has done this. And try and understand, how they would see the world. For example, you're asking for $2,000, but really, what's the principle behind that? Why should insurance matter? That is, if you hadn't had insurance, would you really expect the dog owner to be liable for the full $32,000? Because the answer should be the same, whether the cost was 2,000 or 32,000 in terms of liability. Okay, so I'm not trying to tell you what the answer to this is, who's right and who's wrong. Instead, what I want you to be thinking about is, as you go into this negotiation, what is the information you'd like to be primed with?
