Cease the Harassment, Demand the Respect
Video Transcribed: Do cease and desist letters have any authority in the State of Oklahoma? I’m James Wirth, an attorney in Oklahoma and that is the question that we have, cease and desist letters and their authority.
Okay, so it’s not the same as civil litigation. You’re not filing it with the court. You’re not getting orders set by a judge. It doesn’t have that judicial oversight. So it’s not official in that respect. It’s not defined by statute, the process isn’t how you go through it. So it is technically informal and it’s usually done before litigation or to avoid litigation because it can be done quickly, it can be done cheaply, and hopefully, you can get over the results that you want.
If someone is violating your rights, you send them a cease and desist, just telling them to stop and letting them know the potential legal consequences if they don’t. In order to make it serious, you have a lawyer do it. You make sure that they’ve got their letterhead on it and that it is signed and that it is served by certified mail, so they know it’s a big deal. If they refuse to comply, then you know and you have proof that they had noticed they were in violation based on that letter being sent and that being received and they still refused to. So if you have to go to litigation, which is the formal process, you’re at a good starting point to do so.
So the question that we got is do cease and insist letters have any authority? They don’t have technical authority defined under the law, but they do have utility. They can be a good thing to get legal situations resolved and it can be faster and cheaper than litigation it can be a prelude that sets you up in a better place for litigation if it doesn’t work out that they cease and desist based on the letter being sent.
All right, if you’re dealing with a circumstance where your rights are being violated and you want to do something about that, you’re not just going to want to take information from a general video on the internet. You’re going to want to talk to an attorney privately and confidentially about that. To get that scheduled with a Tulsa criminal defense lawyer at my office, you go online to makelaweasy.com.
