EPISODE #4 – WAS THERE ANOTHER WAY?
GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
MEDIATION – #322
EPISODE #4 – WAS THERE ANOTHER WAY?
Just to recap this is how Episode 3 finished
“The Judge ordered the Dad to pay £8,800 compensation to the Wife and another £11,000 to her husband’s estate, following his death after the initial trial. He also ordered the parents of the Dad to pay £1,700 compensation to reflect interference with the Elderly Neighbour’s right of way over a passage leading to their flat, which had been frequently obstructed by building materials. The case will come back to court again at a later date for a decision as to who pays the lawyers’ bills for the dispute.
A dispute that got out of hand. It should have been nipped in the bud but how does Mediation come into play. Who does What?”
Loss of temper can come at a cost. Freedom is limited and not absolute. There are rules and we disregard them at our cost as the Dad has discovered in our real life case. There is no indication that either party – the Dad or the Elderly Neighbours – considered mediation and yet the facts of this case cried out for someone to get in between the warring neighbours and lower the temperature and go to jaw-jaw instead of war-war.
It is said that the most used category of mediations is not commerce or matrimonial or work place disputes but neighbour fall outs. Any aspiring mediator looking to build a career in dispute resolution should register his/her skills with four local authorities and sit back and wait for the referrals to arrive in the Inbox.
It won’t pay very well but it will be first class experience. And you need to start on the ground floor. You need to be tested, challenged, provoked, assailed and angered. Cutting edge experience at the work face – the best training there is. And while you may look to move on to better paid referrals – nothing wrong in that – never sever your links with the world of neighbour disputes. It is the war zone that keeps you alert, on the ball, up to scratch and ever ready to think of new initiatives to create solutions.
Thinking “out of the box” often helps. Look for secondary even tertiary issues which allow you to inject fresh options and thoughts into the dispute. You may recall earlier in the year I cited a fictional neighbours’ dispute over noise and car parking. A brash young couple newly arrived in the neighbourhood had upset an elderly couple of many years residence.
The solution lay very much “off centre”. A link was made between the former teaching career of the elderly neighbour wife and the younger son of the brash couple who was experiencing reading difficulties. The wife helped the lad and the atmosphere eased. Tension gave way to dialogue and better relations.
Success is not guaranteed. You, the Mediator, are not in control of events but with creative thinking you can make one and one add up to three. So no ossified thinking or fixed reactions. Look outside the box and see if you can create some synergy. Back to our real-life case that ended up in court no reference was made to mediation. Maybe it was offered and rejected because both sides wanted their day in court. But the case cried out for mediation. The disputes are there in real life – if you want to develop another string to your bow.
ARBITRATION – THE ADVOCATES DO NOT GET ALONG
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.