Two cases recently fit in one of my favorite categories: those awards that get “un-vacated.” These cases went through arbitration, had that arbitration award vacated by a district court, only to have the award later resurrected by an appellate court….
“Joint sessions are a waste of time,” said the judge conducting a mediation in which I was representing one of the parties. In that mediation I was asking for a joint session, but the judge still blocked us from doing one because the other side would not agree….
The US District Court for the Western District of New York pulled settlement week out of the dustbin to help clear some its back log in November 2017.
If I had to choose a favorite subset of arbitration cases, it might be the ones that come after SCOTUS remands to a state supreme court. How does a state high court full of accomplished professionals, the cream of the legal crop in their state, respond after the U.S. Supreme Court has found their previous arbitration opinion was flawed….
Whenever people ask me why I choose arbitration law to write and talk about, one of the reasons I give is that the law is in flux, creating a demand for information and analysis. Despite the fact that the Federal Arbitration Act has been around for over 90 years, there are constantly new developments in its interpretation.
As has been noted by Professor Stacie Strong, people should be very careful about drafting arbitration clauses. They can lead to many complications in just getting the arbitration started.
Conversations are the social lubricant that makes relationships, moving ahead professionally, generating new clients and settling lawsuits easier.
Negotiation and mediation are all about communication.
Recently, Susan Yates and I conducted mediation trainings on behalf of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Judicial Branch Office of Mediation and Arbitration, and the University of New Hampshire, School of Law.
No one is perfect. We all get upset. But some of us get upset more often than others.