Mediation

I may have mentioned before, but I like books, especially novels, especially, especially Legal novels. That and historical fiction top my list.

In my career, I have been involved in a couple of lawsuits. I have been deposed a couple of times when an angry S. Texas royalty owner thought that we should have drilled more wells on his side of the fence.

Well, over the last several weeks, I have been the "principle" in a mediation concerning our minority owners in our Russia JV. Now this has nothing to do with Russia, these are Americans suing Americans - it just happens to be a Russian JV. In any kind of disagreement between parties, there are three main ways to proceed through "dispute resolution". You can have 1) a trial (typically in front of a judge & jury), 2) arbitration - in which an arbitrator listens to both sides and decides who's got the better claim, and 3) a mediation, in which a third party attempts to find a common middle ground that both parties can ultimately agree on. My recent Russia partnership went through the third process ; a Mediation.

Both parties got to plead their case (or the weakness of opposing case) in front of each other, and then we went to separate rooms. From there the Mediator, an old retired judge in our case practiced "shuttle diplomacy" going back and forth until a settlement is reached or the parties decide they cannot go any further. In our case one plaintiff was scheduled for arbitration in July, while the other was scheduled to go to trial in state court. My company and the two plaintiffs decided to try the mediation before pursuing the more expensive and less predictable arbitrations and trials.

The mediation is one of those things that you schedule with the agreement that you will stay until you're done. In this case we went all day June 11th and then from 4:00 PM until 1:00 AM last Monday. Whew! What a long and frustrating couple of days. In the end we made a deal just after 1:00 AM. neither party liked the settlement, but I guess it was better than the trials. Anyway, it didn't go the way it was supposed to in the latest Grisham novel - I guess you can't believe everything you read!