Business Conflict Blog

It is uncomfortable for all concerned when a party to a mediation disowns the “settlement” purported to have been reached and challenges the enforceability of the writing made at the mediation session.  A previous post discussed a New Jersey case in which the mediator offered testimony as to whether there had been a meeting of the minds.  (That case has gone on to the New Jersey Supreme Court.)

Two recent cases — while they don’t involve mediator testimony (happily) – shed some light on what might constitute “best practices” in documenting a settlement in mediation.  The first case will be discussed here.  A second post will present the other, as well as some tentative “lessons learned.” Read more »

Tags: Add new tag, Mediation

Mediators are trained to detect subtle opportunities for value-adding integrative outcomes: separating positions from interests, offering out-of-the-box suggestions, and looking for ways that the parties can find mutual benefit.

For me, that ended in an early-career EEOC mediation where the ADA claimant, having been offered every accommodation to her disability, refused to withdraw the claim unless she was paid $600,000 — more than twenty times her salary. 

In mediation, as in life, money talks.  And Dwight Golann has recently reported empirical research backing up that conclusion.

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Tags: Add new tag, Mediation

A highlight of the 2011 ABA Annual Meeting in Toronto was a session on “Wikileaks, National Security and Free Speech.”  Moderated by Devon Chafee, Legislative Counsel for the American Civil Liberies Union, the panel boasted McInnes Cooper partner and privacy expert David T.S. Fraser; Charles D. Tobin of Holland & Knight; Professor Steve Vladeck of American University’s Washington College of Law; and Lee Williams, Assistant General Counsel to the Cable News Network Inc. Read more »

Tags: Add new tag, Public Policy

In preparation for next week’s Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, I have been delighted to get to know a group of judges who will be offering a program on Saturday afternoon, August 7, on the use of ADR in Business Courts.  One of them, Judge Steven I Platt of Maryland, maintains an interesting blog to which he has recently contributed a thoughtful article on the “why” of dispute resolution in business courts. Read more »

Tags: Add new tag, ADR, conflict management, Courts, Public Policy