ADR: should we be more alternative? Steven Friel investigates
Over the last 10 years, since the Woolf Reforms of the late 1990s, the courts have gone to great lengths to encourage alternatives to litigation for the resolution of civil and commercial disputes. Mediation, a form of non-binding structured negotiations involving a neutral third party mediator, is the principal method of alternative dispute resolution considered by litigants and encouraged by the courts.
However, such is the fervour with which the courts have come to embrace mediation that, in many cases, it is no longer considered an optional alternative. It has become, to a large extent, a mandatory procedure that litigants must have a good reason not to attempt, and must be approached by litigants in an objectively reasonable manner if they are not to be met with adverse costs orders later down the line.
Litigant Pitfalls
The recent case of The Earl of Malmesbury v Strutt and Parker [2008] EWHC 424 (QB), [2008] All ER (D) 257 (Mar) highlights yet again the pitfalls for litigants
