Arbitration

Arbitration is being heavily criticized in business circles, as well as in consumer, employment, franchise, and civil rights contexts. The question in the later categories revolves principally around whether those parties should be in arbitration at all.  Criticism in business circles revolves around time, cost, appellate review, and split-the-baby awards.

While arbitration is a creature of contract and the parties have designed their own process before the arbitrator is appointed, their choice of arbitrators will make a difference.  Whether the arbitrator makes decision has a real impact on how long the proceeding takes and how much it costs.

Don loves to mediate and nothing is more rewarding that parties forging their own deal – they are much more likely to self-enforce a deal they’ve made than one that is foisted upon them.  But arbitration is not mediation.  If the parties cannot make their own deal and choose arbitration to break impasse, they should get procedurally fair and timely decisions.  Don will be well prepared and will manage the process by:

• establishing ground rules governing an arbitration in the period immediately following the initiation of the arbitration to ensure an expeditious, cost-effective and fair process
• ruling on discovery requests and disputes
• determining whether to apply rules of evidence and to what degree
• hearing expert witnesses and cross examinations
• reviewing briefs, documents and other exhibits
• entertaining argument by counsel before rendering a decision
• serving on appellate arbitration panels if a second look has written into the arbitration agreement (or agreed prior to award rendition) and is invoked by one of the parties