Comment on Whats life impact when central station calls wrong first responder December 10, 2018

KEN KIRSCHENBAUM, ESQ
ALARM - SECURITY INDUSTRY LEGAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER / THE ALARM EXCHANGE
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Comment on Whats life impact when central station calls wrong first responder
December 10, 2018
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comment on Whats life impact when central station calls wrong first responder from December 1, 2018 article
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Ken
            Great answer regarding the "life impact" question.  Also important is that most central stations use autodialers in conjunction with their software, this really does help in operator error in call dialing.  Bad data is bad data.   What some companies fail to realize is that updating call lists is a great way to communicate with your customer both in additional sales opportunities and customer service.  
Anna 
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Ken,
            A comment on your December 1, 2018 post from JK asking what the life impact is when the monitoring center calls the police instead of the fire department.  This type of incident actually happened about 20 years ago and it is an interesting case (name of company withheld to protect the innocent).
            The customer was a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair.  She was cooking and started a fire in her kitchen.  She rolled her wheelchair to her front door keypad and pushed the ‘fire’ icon on the keypad (why she didn’t open the door and roll out we don’t know).  Since she didn’t have a fire system the panel didn’t send a fire signal.  Luckily it sent an undefined ‘duress’ signal.  The central station called the police department.  Police officers arrived in about five minutes, saw smoke coming from the house, kicked in the door, and carried out the occupant.  Police then radioed for fire response.  She was uninjured but there was about $40,000 in damage to her home.
            She sued the alarm company claiming that if the fire department would have been dispatched sooner, the loss would have been less.  What was the result of the trial?  We will never know because the alarm company’s attorney pointed out the Limitation of Liability clause in the very well written Monitoring Agreement and the Plaintiff’s attorney dropped the suit. 
            Think that you don’t need well written Monitoring Agreements?  How about spending a year or two defending yourself in a groundless lawsuit because a Plaintiff’s attorney smells a big payday.
Mitch Reitman
Reitman Consulting Group
Fort Worth, TX
817-698-9999
http://www.reitman.us
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Response
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            This kind of mistake happens all the time.  Proper contracts is all that stands between a claim for severe injury, death or mammoth property loss and driving your company out of business.  There is no way to sugar coat it.  Sure, you need to carry insurance and you hope you have enough of it to come to the rescue when the time comes.  Insurance is like jelly beans, or my favorite, sour patch for kids; you can never have enough.
            I cannot stress enough how important it is to have proper contracts.  Best contracts, best prices, what are you still thinking about?  www.alarmcontracts.com
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Ken Kirschenbaum,Esq
Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum PC
Attorneys at Law
200 Garden City Plaza
Garden City, NY 11530
516 747 6700 x 301
ken@kirschenbaumesq.com
516 747 6700
www.KirschenbaumEsq.com