Managing Expectations Is A Legal Issue - Not

The theme of this conference is "Managing Expectations". I intended to argue that managing, or more importantly failing to meet expectations is, amongst other things, a legal issue. My premise was to be that people, as potential plaintiffs, and the courts as adjudicators, 'expect' the emergency services to meet certain standards. Where it is believed that the standards have not been met then people are more likely to seek a legal remedy and defendants are more likely to lose in court. Accordingly if the emergency services can manage expectations, that is persuade the courts and the community to have reasonable expectations of their emergency services, the risk of legal action would be reduced. In fact, and rather disappointingly for the theme of this conference, in writing this paper I have come to the conclusion that managing and meeting expectations will only be marginally relevant to the question of whether or not the emergency services are likely to be sued or to successfully defend a lawsuit.