Anthony acts as both a mediator and counsel in mediations and is on the panel of the following appointing bodies CEDR, CIArb, TecSA, Bar Council, Association of Northern Mediators and ADR Group. He has settled disputes ranging from commercial contracts, professional negligence, property disputes, construction, employment and insurance.

Many disputes are stopped in their tracks and never run the full course of arbitration or litigation as a result of a settlement in mediation. Mediation is a method where the parties are coaxed into a solution by seeing common sense irrespective of their legal rights under the contract. Further it keeps the relationship of the parties in tact.

General Position

In recent years the courts have been encouraging warring parties to resolve their disputes by way of alternative dispute resolution in particular Mediation.

Various pre-action litigation protocols encourage the warring parties to consider mediation as a means of settling disputes. If a party unreasonably refuses to go to mediation then the court may later impose cost penalties against the unreasonable party, even if that party wins the case.

What is Mediation?

Mediation is a process where an independent third party, the mediator, tries to facilitate a resolution to their dispute. The mediator does not and cannot impose a settlement upon the parties. There are advantages to mediation:

Swiftness: Mediations are usually scheduled within a few weeks or, at most, a couple of months, from the time of a request. Most mediation sessions last between a few hours and a day, depending on the complexity of the case. In contrast, arbitration and/or lawsuits often take many months or, more typically, years to resolve.

Confidentiality: Mediation sessions are private so no one even needs to know that you have a dispute in the first place. Everything said in mediation is confidential and without prejudice and cannot legally be revealed outside the mediation or used later in a court of law.

Low Cost: many private dispute resolution companies, which typically mediate construction disputes involving a substantial sum of money, offer services for fees that amount to a fraction of the cost of bringing a lawsuit. Claimants and defendants will often find they end up saving many thousands of pounds as compared to what a litigated dispute would cost.

Fairness: In mediation, you tailor your own solution to the dispute according to your needs; legal precedents or the whim of a judge will not dictate the solution to your case. Best of all, if you don't think a settlement proposal is fair, you don't have to agree to it.

Flexibility: In mediation, you can raise any issues related to your dispute that you believe are important. For example the parties may go beyond strict legal issues of the dispute and include in their agreement matters that ordinarily wouldn't be part of what a judge would order. Similarly, disputes sometimes harbour undiscovered or undisclosed issues, and mediation offers the flexibility to ferret these out.

Less Stressful: For many people, going to court is scary. You face hard-to-understand procedures, a win-lose scenario and the frustration of being dependent on a system. Mediation, by contrast, is informal, is conducted in plain English, and any solution must be agreed to by both parties.

Non-coercive: The mediator is a third party who is neutral and acts as a catalyst helping the parties to settle and does not have authority to impose a decision, the solution rests with the parties. It's almost always clear within a half of a day or so whether mediation is likely to work, and unlike litigation it’s a voluntary procedure and you can withdraw at anytime if it isn't.

Showing Your Hand: Mediation develops communications between the parties. To mediate effectively you generally need to reveal enough about your case, but this information is in your control and stays with the mediator until you are prepared to reveal it to the opposing party, in order to facilitate a compromise and settlement.

Splitting the difference: This is a paradox the parties do not simply split the difference otherwise the parties could do this themselves. Mediation facilitates a solution through negotiations that addresses the issues that are most important to the individual and these important issues will not necessarily be the same for the opposing party, this is where the settlement is facilitated.

Success: Many independent mediators and mediation services report that in more than four out of five cases, the parties are able to settle all issues in dispute to their mutual satisfaction. As compared to court, where the losing party is almost always angry, this is success indeed. I have represented and witnessed multimillion-pound settlements in mediation.

Please Click Here to view a sample 'Settlement Agreement' (Word Document)