BarkingDogs.net

The material on this page was contributed by Geordie Duckler, LLC - Attorney at Law,
in an interview conducted by the Barking Dogs Webmaster in May of 2006

Go to the index for the Geordie Duckler interview

On the Value of Informational Letters and Letters Threatening Legal Action

Barking Dogs Webmaster:
People will sometimes hire an attorney to write a fake-out letter threatening legal action against the dog owner, even though in reality, they don't have the resources necessary to follow through with a court case. Do you recommend that?

Geordie Duckler:
No. Those posturing threat letters don't do anything for anybody. The letters I send, when I do send letters, are designed to educate and not really to bully or threaten. My letters say things like, "Here's what the code says," and "here's what this case says," and "here's what this rule says." I have footnotes and I recite a case or a section from another lawsuit. The point is not so much that the dog owner gets it and says, "Wow, that must be right." It's that they get it and they take it to their lawyer and the lawyer now has a chance, before anything else has happened, before a lawsuit is filed or anything, to see pretty much whether the complaining party, the neighbors, actually know what the rules are and whether they have a chance of winning. So the letter is not so much threatening as informational - with the information going to the attorney as opposed to the dog owner. Sometimes that helps. But threats don't get you where you want to go - action does.

Go to the index for the Geordie Duckler interview

This page from the Duckler Interview is part of Section Three:
the Law section of barkingdogs.net