Business Conflict Blog

While working for a company, a guy opens up a competing business and lures away customers.  He is sued by his employer for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty.  Prior to trial he participates in a mediation, that is unsuccessful.  At trial he loses and is found liable for $364,000 in damages and $51,000 in attorney fees.

What does he do?  What any red-blooded American would do — he sues his attorney in federal court for shoddy representation during the mediation. Read more »

Tags: Mediation

I told my wife that I wanted to do the following exercise with my 50-person ADR survey class at New York Law School:

“Find a partner and face each other.  Touch your palms together about face-level and then grasp each other’s hand.  The person who can get the other person’s hand past their own ear five times in the next fifteen seconds gets a hundred bucks.”

My wife’s response:  “Don’t do that!  They’ll hurt each other!  Say ‘No hurting’ or ‘Be careful of each other’ or something like that!” Read more »

Tags: Negotiation, Teaching

From the invaluable BASESwiki comes news of just the development I and others have pounded the table about:  A long-term project that features a formal and permanent ”canary-in-the-mine” that identifies and addresses problems early on, and successfully prevents conflicts. Read more »

Tags: conflict management, systems design

Peter L. Michaelson is an attorney specializing in intellectual property, and an arbitrator and mediator of very substantial experience.  He also enjoys cruises to Alaska, which may characterize his “beyond-the-boundaries” attitude when it comes to adding value to clients of ADR processes. 

(Pete Michaelson’s photo of an Alaskan buffalo, sauntering in Kodiak.)

He has recently published an article that brings out a little-remarked but potentially costly issue:  How to ensure compatibility among party-appointed arbitrators and encourage an efficient and professional arbitral panel. Read more »

Tags: Arbitration