Private conversations. Powerful outcomes.
Who Chooses Mediation
Anyone, at anytime between the circumstance that lead to a dispute, up to a trial taking place.
Commercial
A commercial dispute *might* cost your company a lot more than money. It can cost time that is otherwise critical to business development and profitability, it can cost relationships and unquantifiable collateral damage to your reputation when clients, customers and colleague know you are in a dispute.
Our mediation offers all participants to the dispute the chance to speak directly to one another, or with or via the mediator. What you tell the mediator is confidential unless you consent to it being shared: this process and environment can lead to your own privately agreed resolution. If you agree a settlement, it is binding and the dispute ends.
Mediation is suited to insurance disputes involving the following cover: political risk (CEND), trade credit and excess trade credit, aviation, financial institutions, professional indemnity (solicitors), kidnap and ransom, product recall (regional and global, food and electronics), third party liability claims and reinsurance.
Workplace
If you have a team who are struggling to work well together, managers not managing well or executives whose disagreements prevent them making progress, mediation can help. The space and time to speak to an independent third party, with no interest in the outcome allows productive and honest conversations to take place. In a confidential environment, causes of disagreement can be understood and then solutions identified by the participants themselves, because they know and understand their working environment.
As a result of mediation, a longer term dispute can be avoided, stress and anxiety reduced (if not removed completely), positive relationships restored and productivity returned. Workplace mediation offers an opportunity to nurture a workforce, acknowledging that sometimes we all need a bit of extra time and space to see things clearly.
Civil
Civil disputes don’t always feel civil; in fact, they usually feel highly personal, for both the claimant and the defendant, and the more personal a dialogue the greater the chances of it becoming polarised. You can choose to change the direction of that dialogue, and move to resolution. Together with your lawyer at a mediation, you and the other participants can engage in confidential discussions to understand whether and where opportunities for resolution exist.
Housing, landlord and tenant
Your home environment matters, whether you work there or not, and whether you own it or not. If you are a landlord you need to trust your tenants. Before an argument becomes a formal dispute mediation can help participants explore and agree any element of property use that is causing disruption. Whether it is repair, behaviour or use of the property, mediation will provide a confidential environment where all ideas can be explored and from where agreement can be reached.
Is mediation compulsory?
That’s a great question. In the UK the recent case of Churchill[1] asked whether, when and how a court can lawfully order parties to a dispute to engage in non-court-based dispute resolution, (“NCBDR”) of which mediation is one of the dominant options. The judgment considered a previous case, referred to as Halsey where the court had decided that ‘to oblige truly unwilling parties to refer their disputes to mediation would be to impose an unacceptable obstruction on their right of access to the court”.[2] For some time since Halsey, questions have been asked about whether mediation can be compulsory, after all, don’t we have a right to go to court if we choose? Yes we do, and one reason for the tension this question has caused is concern that being ordered to mediate may conflict with an individual’s right to a fair trial (enshrined in Article 6 of the Human Right Act 1998). But, said those in this debate, ordering mediation forces no one to settle; the only obligation is to attend, listen and consider what settlement might look like.
Churchill concluded that no previous judgments would bind current or future court’s decision making on that question. The court was therefore free to determine that it does have the power to stay proceedings for the engagement in NCBDR, or to order it[3]; whether and when a court does so is a matter for the judges’ individual discretion[4]. (paragraph 59).
Sitting alongside caselaw are the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), governing how litigation is undertaken. These rules have always encouraged resolution of disputes before they reach trail stage. A significant change took effect from 1st October 2024, by means of a series of amendments to the CPR. The Overriding Objective of the Court now includes “promoting or using alternative dispute resolution” [CPR 1.1 (f)] and the management of cases can include the Court considering “whether to order or encourage the parties to engage in alternative dispute resolution” [CPR 28.7 (1)(d), 28.14 (1)(f) and 29.2 (1A)] as a means of such means of resolution.
Beyond that, the UK operates a cost system where the ‘loser pays’ the winner’s costs. The CPR has also been amended when costs are at issue and the conduct of the parties is being considered. One part of that conduct that the Court will now take into account is ‘whether a party failed to comply with an order for alternative dispute resolution, or unreasonably failed to engage in alternative dispute resolution’. [CPR 44.2 (5) (e)].
There are multiple positive reasons to why settling one’s own dispute on terms suggested, discussed and agreed with the other participant(s) is preferable to a court order.
[1]
Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil [2023] EWCA Civ 1416
[2] Halsey v. Milton Keynes General NHS Trust [2004] EWCA Civ 576, [2004] paragraph 9.
[3] Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil [2023] EWCA Civ 1416 paragraph 58.
[4]
Churchill v Merthyr Tydfil [2023] EWCA Civ 1416 paragraph 59.