MEDIATION BETWEEN GENERATION EPISODE 6 #293
GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
MEDIATION WITH THE SCHOOL HEAD – FINAL EPISODE
GENERATIONS IN CONFLICT. EPISODE 6
The current Mediation narrative on the problems of 14 year old Mavis that have arisen out of her teacher’s request to tell her class about her Family Tree, has provoked a response from readers of this Column. In summary some say the Head was wrong to pursue Mavis’s problem with her parents whilst others argue that the Head has rightly taken a wider view of the meaning of education.
Today I pause in the narrative to address the divide. Looking at the issue in micro terms, should the Head leave things as they are and just focus on preparation for GCSE’s and A levels. Isn’t the function of school merely to help the pupil to attain the best marks and take steps to secure their future – leaving family issues within the family and to resist bringing them into the classroom? Or, is education a much wider concept where the School plays a key role in preparing the pupils for the Big World – families, society, and individual human values.
An associated question is whether the School Heads should be trained in mediation skills to prepare them for the growing range of social and family problems. A casual glance at the newspapers or even TV news suggests that parents are becoming more assertive and ever ready to confront the rules of school. For example, more parents are arranging holidays even if they clash with the school programme and here travel agents play a role by offering significant discounts for one week overseas breaks either side of a school term holiday. Family budgets play a role here but so does the loss of 7 days in class. Another issue is school uniform where parents – mindful of challenges to family expenditures – resist the requirement for school blazers and specific sports kit.
Mediation is still the New Boy on the Block where education is concerned. Practitioners of mediation are evangelical about the process. For them – in the main – it works and is an invaluable tool in resolving conflicts. It is informal and in the hands of the skilled mediator can achieve much in removing obstacles and minimising conflicts – not just in education but in all walks of life.
This Column is committed to narratives that highlight open thinking and resist hard core narrow attitudes. Mediation does have to challenge the mind set of the conflicted parties and step by step – the artichoke again! – move them from fixed irrevocable positions to a willingness to embrace new and original thinking.
Mediations do fail – mainly – because parties come to the table with fixed and inflexible strategies and a Mediator should not waste too much time with such disputes. The Mediator should try to meet with the parties alone because – on occasions – lawyers have their own agenda which is not necessarily in the best interests of the parties.
But Mediation is preferable to Litigation because it makes the parties part of the solution – they have an interest in its successful implementation. This is more conducive to improved long term relations than arbitration or litigation which always produces a winner and a loser. One party is left smarting which is not a recipe for improved long term relations.
The nest episode focuses on solutions to two matters – Brenda’s embarrassment about her family’s fractured relationships and her father’s antagonistic relationship with his own father – Brenda’s grandfather.
Episode
- AN ANXIOUS NEW ARBITRATOR
- AN ARBITRATOR STUMBLES
- ANGER MANAGEMENT
- ARBITRATION – FEES OF ARBITRATORS
- ARBITRATOR/MEDIATOR
- ARBITRATORS FEES AGAIN
- AWKWARD QUESTIONS
- BACK TO BASICS – A MATRIMONIAL MEDIATION
- DETERMINED NEUTRALITY
- DISCRETION
- DISPUTE RESOLUTION
- FAMILY TENSIONS
- FATHER’S LATE WILL
- FRAUDULENT DOCUMENTS
- GENDER ISSUES AT SCHOOL
- HOUSING AFGHANISTAN REFUGEES
- LATE APPLICATION TO SUBMIT NEW EVIDENCE
- LENGTHY ORAL SUBMISSIONS
- MEDIATION - ANGER MANAGEMENT
- MEDIATION – DENTISTS DISAGREE
- NEIGHBOUR DISPUTES + SECOND HOMES
- NEW WORLD – NEW WORDS
- POST HEARING EVALUATION
- THE ARBITRATOR BECOMES A MEDIATOR
- THE BACKGROUND
- THE BIGGEST SOURCE OF MEDIATION
- THE CORE QUALITY
- THE DOMINATING SOLICITOR
- THE EXPERT WITNESS
- THE FAMILY PROPERTY DISPUTE
- THE FLEXIBILITY OF MEDIATION
- THE MEDIATORS’ SKILLS
- THE OVER-ACTIVE PARTY LAWYER
- THE STORY SO FAR
- TO INTERVENE OR NOT TO INTERVENE
- TRADE ARBITRATORS + LAWYER ARBITRATORS
- UKRAINIAN REFUGEES
- WORDS MATTER
- WRITERS’ BLOCK
Graham Perry On Dispute Resolution
This website serves a number of purposes.
First, it enables me to bring my skills and experience to a wider audience. I remain active as an arbitrator, a mediator, a party advacate and this website tells you about me.
Second, it fulfils a long-held desire to promote a forum for discussion of dispute resolution issues. I have for 20 years been the Chair of the Arbitration Lunch Club together with the Hon Secretary, David Barnett. Pre-Covid we would meet three times a year for a Lunch sponsored by a City of London Law Firm and at the Lunches we would hold a discussion of two topical dispute resolution issues sometimes with the participation of Judges Woolf, Rix, Coleman and Sumption. Covid has triggered the Club to go Zoom-wide with participants drawn from around the world.
Third, there is a current need for a lively inter-active website that, on a daily basis, enables dispute resolvers from around the world to participate in discussion, debate, and disagreement on issues affecting the conduct and development of arbitration and mediation. Contributions can be academic as well as practical; studious as well as flippant; argumentative as well as collegiate.
Why not read my articles on dispute resolution.?
Should you need any advice or require my services contact me today!
Goals
My goal is to make the website lively and encouraging to arbitrators and mediators; to put restraint and self-consciousness to one side and play their part in making dispute resolution lively, informative and progressive. We are always moving forward. Elsewhere on this site, you will find a page which tells you how to become involved.
SOMETHING UNUSUAL
Here’s an interesting situation.
You are a party-appointed arbitrator in a Tribunal of 3. The parties are buying and selling soya beans. They have a falling out over the terms of a Trade Agreement.
Sellers sues Buyer. The dispute is commercial and relates to the minimum quantities in monthly shipments over a 12 month period. A normal commercial dispute.
But then fireworks and Buyers send strongly worded letters to public bodies alleging that Sellers have committed fraud. Sellers argue that they have been libelled and add a claim for damages for libel to the claim about minimum quantities.
Does the Tribunal have to address the libel claim? Two arguments;-
1. The arbitrators are commercial people appointed for their commercial knowledge. They know nothing about libel. They refuse to adjudge the libel claim.
2. They have to handle the libel claim. It is a dispute. The parties want the arbitrators to decide the claim. The arbitrators have no choice. Deal with it.
This issue went to the courts and the Commercial Court made a judgment. But let me throw this open for comment. How do you think the arbitrators should act. Let me hear from you and then I will let you know what the Court said.
Graham Perry.
A Family Mediation
You are a family mediator. You are approached jointly by a husband and wife for assistance in a matrimonial break up. There are two children of the marriage – a boy aged 12 and a girl aged 14. They are both represented by separate solicitors.
The mediation proceeds. A mediation agreement is signed. Letters are exchanged. Meetings take place. You become aware that there are personal issues between the parents concerning their relationship. They do not concern you as such because the divorce is proceeding and these personal issues do not impinge upon the issues in dispute which are to do with financial arrangements, holiday arrangements and involvement with schools. In due course, these matters are agreed and recorded in the Final Agreement which is signed by the husband, the wife and yourself. Your fee is paid.
Three years later your wife has passed away through illness and you are alone without children. In a social setting, you happen to meet up with the wife and a relationship commences. Out of the blue, you receive a letter from the former husband’s solicitors alleging non-disclosure by you of the relationship which, on their information, was current at the time of the mediation. Further, the letter refers to a lack of impartiality on your part and material non-disclosure of the relationship and indicates a claim for damages will follow.
What do you do?
About Me
Graham Perry qualified as a solicitor in 1973 after graduating from Churchill College, Cambridge where he studied History and Economics. He practised for nine years and then made a major career change to become Managing Director, of London Export, a UK company formed in 1953 to concentrate on trade and business with the Peoples’ Republic of China. Since 1990 Graham has been an international dispute resolver of commercial problems resolving commercial disputes.
Experienced Dispute Resolver
Commenced my career as a dispute resolver combining my legal skills and commercial experience. I am an active arbitrator and trade representative in London with the Grain and Feed Trade Association (GAFTA), the Federation of Oils, Seeds and Fats (FOSFA), the London Metal Exchange (LME) and, occasionally, with the Sugar Association. I have a growing practice in shipping disputes and sit on the arbitration committee of the LME and FOSFA. I am a frequent lecturer and writer on commodity arbitration and mediation, giving lectures in China, India, Ivory Coast, Bhutan and the United Kingdom. I am an accredited CEDR mediator.