I think bad house cases are considered expensive because, again, it’s not an expense that people are planning for. A lot of people are buying as much house as they can afford and what they do is they go to the bank and get the financing. They’re not building into it the fact that there might be something wrong with the house and we may need to spend 10 or $15,000.00 to fix it. So I think an unexpected expense is always expensive.

But secondly, it’s the emotion involved with that and whenever you have emotion it’s the fight and becoming proven being right becomes more paramount than getting this done efficiently or in a businesslike manner. And so that inability to step back and be dispassionate about the analysis also makes it expensive. I’m not going to kid ourselves; hourly rates can have a tendency to accumulate. But what makes it expensive is when attorneys have to spend their time on non-litigation related whether it’s constant communication with the client. Now, don’t get me wrong, you want good attorneys who are communicating with their clients but when clients are calling every day repeating some of the same things and the same ground is being covered it tends to get expensive.

The other thing that raises the expense in litigation is unknown factors and what I would consider potentially poor lawyering on the other side whether it’s an inexperienced lawyer or a lawyer who is in it for the fight an don’t necessarily putting their clients’ interests to get it done effectively. ‘Cause if you’re going to fight over every single issue it makes litigation very expensive and pretty soon you have an expense that you weren’t counting on that’s very disproportionate to the overall cost of the house.