Business Conflict Blog

One of the most interesting sessions at the ABA Dispute Resolution meeting in Washington was a report on an initiative of the Straus Institute at Pepperdine and the Dickerson School of Law at Penn State:  A National Roundtable on Consumer and Employment Dispute Resolution. 

Consumer and employment arbitration is a difficult topic upon which to find rational discourse.  It seems that folks tend to follow Pogo’s advice: “Don’t let the facts get in the way of your research.”  Yet here are Co-Chairs Tom Stipanowich and Nancy Welsh forming a Planning Committee comprising Lisa Bingham, Larry Mills and Homer LaRue to invite 30 scholars, advocates, representatives, policymakers and ADR professionals to have a rational conversation on the topic last February.  The session was conducted under “Chatham House Rules“  and a summary report reveals not only the topics discussed, but a work plan coming out of the initiative.

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Tags: ADR, Arbitration, Employment, Mediation, Public Policy

No sooner had Colin Rule addressed my students at New York Law School but we met each other again in Washington, DC, where he was on a panel on online dispute resolution at the Annual Meeting of the ABA’s Section on Dispute Resolution.  Colin’s seven years with EBay/Paypal, combined with his new start-up Modria, have turned that sparkle in his eye to a glint.  He sees the future, does Colin, and it doesn’t include lawyers — or the law.

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Tags: conflict management, ODR, systems design

I remember attending the first meeting of the Dispute Resolution Section of the American Bar Association, in Boston, in 1999. I was on a panel discussing Y2K, and absolutely everybody I had ever met in ADR was in attendance. Y2K has since moved on, but the ABA Dispute Resolution Section has grown and grown. It meets this year in Washington DC and the schedule is so full it’s like a three-ring circus: You attend one thing, all the time kicking yourself because you’re missing two others.

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Tags: ADR, ADR Institutions, Arbitration, Mediation

This post continues a discussion of some recent court opinions concerning the enforceability of settlement agreements reached during mediation, but subsequently disowned by one of the parties.

In Williamson v. Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals (N.J. App. Div. A-6291-10T1, March 12, 2012), plaintiff sought damages from her employer for alleged violations of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination and other related theories.  The parties participated in voluntary, private mediation that lasted nine hours.  At the conclusion of the mediation, a document was signed by plaintiff, the defendants’ attorney and the mediator(!), reciting that plaintiff would dismiss her complaint with prejudice and receive certain payments and other benefits from defendants. Read more »

Tags: Mediation