You think you are a reasonable person. You know the reasonable and fair price of everything—or you did at the end of 2019, before 2020's COVID, before 2021's supply chain/inflation, and before Russia's 2022 war on Ukraine. As experienced litigators in 2019 and before, we either pushed or resisted the pace of discovery in a relatively reasonable manner. We participated in mandatory non-binding arbitration with a mixture of hope and reticence. We sometimes relied on experienced and retired trial judges to convince our respective clients of value, and we could ultimately turn to a jury of peers to find the true value of the case. With those mechanical gears rusty or broken, we need to go electric. We need to understand that our context has changed and reinvigorate our sense of pace, and upwardly adjust the concept of value. Don't walk away yet—whether you litigate or not, what you think is reasonable is important.  

It is not 2019 anymore. What you could buy for $1.00 in 2020 now costs approximately $1.10, unless of course we are talking about the price of gas, meat, eggs, and wheat which are up over 20%. Gem's Bagels in Port Monmouth, New Jersey, is putting their customers on notice that the price of wheat is up 250% since February. New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway tolls are indexed to increase 36% and 27% respectively. Put in settlement dollars, a million-dollar recovery today has the same buying power that $900,000 did in 2020 (in other words, you need $1.1 million today to equal $1.0 million yesterday). Today's economic reality should have all of us rethinking our finances and insurance. We should be asking ourselves what happens if we are hurt. How do we replace our income, our rent, our homes, our cars? What if we are hospitalized, if we need job retraining, if we need a caretaker for a month, three months, or for the remainder of life? If one can think critically about their own worth and replacement costs, one can be reasonable with others when it comes to value.