I stumbled across an article about a case filed in court, Jane Doe v Proskauer Rose LLP., U.S. District Court (D. C.), case No. 1:17-cv-00910-ABJ, that absolutely intrigues me as a mediator. Using the pseudonym Jane Doe, a female partner in the law firm's District of Columbia office sued the firm for gender discrimination, claiming, [...]
A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about a subrogation matter which I mediated. The facts were not complicated: A homeowner parked her vehicle in her garage in her home and the next thing she knew, the garage caught fire and there was extensive smoke damage throughout the house. After paying out on the [...]
One of the first things I Iearned about in game theory was the prisoner’s dilemma. As explained in Wikipedia, this theory was developed in 1950 by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher while working at the RAND corporation. It explains why two rational beings may not cooperate even though it is in their best interests to [...]
I just obtained a teaching position as a Lecturer of Law (aka adjunct professor) at University of Southern California Gould School of Law teaching the mediation ethics portion of an ADR Ethics class. One of the issues we will be discussing is the conflicting goals of the participants (that is, the parties, their attorneys, and [...]
While everyone agrees that it is always best to have the actual parties and counsel physically present at a mediation, this is not always possible. Often, the plaintiff may appear by telephone and at times, I may not even be able to speak to the plaintiff but only to her counsel sitting in my conference [...]
If you have not yet figured it out, this notion of “alternative facts” intrigues me. (This is my third blog about it!) I think it is because as a mediator, I witness “alternative facts” quite frequently. No party is “lying” to me; in telling her story to me, she is simply telling me the “facts” as [...]
In the context of a marital dissolution proceeding, is there (or should there be) an exception to mediation confidentiality (California Evidence Code section 1119) for financial disclosures “prepared for the purpose of” and used “in the course of … the mediation?” (Evidence Code section 1119). The Legislature believes so; On February 1, 2017, Senator Wieckowski [...]
The other day, I came upon a blog post from the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School that is worth discussing. It is entitled “10 Hard Bargaining Negotiation Tactics” by Keith Lutz (January 10, 2017). I have seen one or more of these tactics often in mediation and despite my best efforts to [...]