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