Here's the clause:

I hereby agree to submit to binding arbitration all disputes and claims arising out of the submission of this application. I further agree, in the event that I am hired by the company, that all disputes that cannot be resolved by informal internal resolution which might arise out of my employment with the company, whether during or after that employment, will be submitted to binding arbitration. I agree that such arbitration shall be conducted under the rules of the American Arbitration Association. This application contains the entire agreement between the parties with regard to dispute resolution, and there are no other agreements as to dispute resolution, either oral or written.

This decision is made more interesting by the recent Parada decision (.pdf) (covered here and here) where the drafter's failure to attach the JAMS arbitration rules cited in the agreement was one of the reasons the Court concluded the arbitration clause was substantively unconscionable.  I think it's safe to say at this point in the development of California law on these issues that it's not malpractice for an attorney to fail to draft an enforceable arbitration clause.  But as the opinions multiply, you can be sure some employer will be looking around for someone to name its legal counsel as the source of his discontent, blame its law firm for having to bear the expense of litigation, and claim damages as a result. 

The best protection for drafters of arbitration clauses (particularly in California where the Courts remain suspicious of adhesion arbitration contracts) is to be familiar with all the case law on the topic in the last five years; to avoid any provision the Courts have used to tip the "sliding scale" in favor of non-enforcement and include those provisions which favorably incline the courts to enforce the clauses.  

What does the 200-year present have to do with conflict resolution week?  It reminds us that new forms never really completely replace the old ones.  We continue to employ every technique we've ever used to suppress, avoid, deny, resolve, transform, or transcend conflict, including force (violent and non-violent such as injunctions subject of a Trial Warrior Blog post this week); thievery (the Trade Secrets Blog); shaming (which Scott Greenfield does to bloggers "looking for fights and dumb as dirt" and which Volokh suggests we do to health insurers); bullying (solutions to which appear at the Citizen Media Law Project); torture (still with us at the Crim Prof Blog); cheating (Make Yourself Better with Their Secrets at Concretely Ambiguous) ingratiation (at the Law School Expert); persuasive argumentation; appeal to third party authority; bargaining; communication; and, problem solving (The Tao of Advice at the Business of Creativity). 

Whichever dispute resolution mechanism you use, it should be much improved if you take up  juggling (as reported this week at Idealawg).

Transformative conflict resolution of the type covered by New York City police officer, Jeff Thompson at Enjoy Mediation, requires accountability (by lawyers, for instance, to the principle of justice at Law21); recognition (at JD Bliss); apology, amends, reconciliation (at Opinio Juris); power with (negotiation and cooperation at the Ohio Family Law Blog) instead of power over (at the Election Law Blog); and, interests rather than rights (at the Gay Couples Law Blog).

No brand of law-giver or enforcer has ever entirely left the scene.  Cops, negotiators, mediators (on the international scene at the Business Conflict Blog); conciliators, arbitrators, trial attorneys (marking tattoos as exhibits over at LawComix), corporate lawyers, legislators  (fomenting a Franken Amendment at the ADR Prof Blawg); judges (whether elected or appointed at Legally Unbound), and, juries (who might be biased at SCOTUS Blog). 

And of course the gadflies (wolf protection lawsuits anyone? at  Point of Law). 

Win, lose, settle, enjoin (at Charon QC) or simply give up (6 Ways We Gave Up Our Privacy at CSO Security and Risk).  We regulate crime and prescribe punishment (Polanski at Sentencing Law and Policy and The End of an Era at Defending People). 

We wage war (at Prawfs Blog) and seek peace (at the Delaware Employment Law Blog) as conflict inevitably erupts over Obama's (embarrassing) peace prize (at Balkinization).

And, lest we forget our primary purpose, we bend our efforts toward justice (which, according to BLT is not necessarily available to card-carrying members of the ACLU).

My own personal 200-year present spans the life of my maternal grandparents who were nine years old in 1909, and that of my step-children’s children, who (assuming they procreate on a reasonable schedule) should be ninety-five'ish in 2109. 

My grandfather, born in 1900, witnessed the birth of electricity, saw the first automobile roll off an assembly line ^[2] and stood awestruck in a cornfield as one of mankind’s first airplanes took flight. ^[3]  Although we've progressed from bi-planes to jets and rockets (some of which may someday be green) we still fly balloons of the type first launched in 1783 -- both Goodyear Blimps and the backyard variety, covered this week by Legal Blog Watch as Law and More

asked here whether the shiny, flying, silver Jiffy Pop-looking craft tethered in the backyard of Richard Heene was an "attractive nuisance" under the law.

Grandpa's first war was, well, the First and his second was the Second,^[4]  as if there'd never been any wars before the Great One. By the time I was born, mid-century, we'd fought the war to end all wars twice and knew we'd never survive a third. 

My imagined grandchildren, ^[6] born sometime between today and 2014, will not be strangers to any of my grandfather’s technologies. Despite the advent of compact fluorescent light bulbs, the early lives of my step-children's children will likely pass under the glow of the same incandescent lights that brightened granddad’s one-room school house. They will be transported to school in cars with internal combustion engines, learn the same alphabet from the same cardboard and paper books (as well as from the "e" variety) ^[7] and play many of the same games ^[8]  he did – hop scotch, jump rope and ring-around the rosy. 

Change will etch itself into the lives of my grandchildren as surely as it did my own, my parents' and my grandparents'.  Hybrids will give way to fully electric (and perhaps hemp-powered) ^[9] vehicles (effective or defective) and though electricity will continue to be  generated by hydroelectric dams, wind farms and nuclear power plants, some new and unimaginable source of power will surely push back the nights of my grand children's children. ^[10]

Law, politics, society and culture also exist in the 200-year present of conflict resolution.  ^[11] In my personal 200-year span, the law seems to have changed the most profoundly. Was it the law first and culture later?  Or do they weave our future together?

The first U.S. woman lawyer, Myra Bradwell, was admitted to practice a mere ten years before my grandmother was born. Mrs. Bradwell’s legal career was the subject of one of the sorriest U.S. Supreme Court decisions ever handed down, in which the Court opined,

The civil law as well as nature itself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender.  The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood. The harmony, not to say the identity, of interests and views which belong, or should belong, to the family institution is repugnant to the idea for a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her husband … for these reasons I think that the laws of Illinois now complained of are not obnoxious to the charge of any abridging any of the privileges and immunities of cities of the United States.

^[12]

Another nineteen years would pass after Bradwell began her practice before she (and my nineteen year old grandmother) were guaranteed the right to vote. ^[13] And another 30 years would pass after my women's movement -- the Second Wave -- before we'd have our own  business magazine -   ForbesWoman (my part in it here).  And let us not forget that despite the 20th Century's great civil rights achievements, when America catches a cold, black America gets pneumonia.  See e.g. Problems All Around for Blacks in Big Law at Being a Black Lawyer.

My grandparents', parents' and step-children's 20th Century was dominated by genocide ^[14] on a scale and a technological precision unimaginable to our earlier forebears.  Mid-century brought with it the threat of nuclear annihilation but also liberated millions of people enslaved by colonialism.  We cured polio in my own lifetime with both "dead" and "live" vaccines (neither of them counterfeit) - a singular moment in scientific history during which no one took ownership of the cure and no one tried to stop others from seeking another, a problem Patently O addressed this week in Reverse Payments.

Whether god or satan, heaven or hell, war or peace "won" the twentieth century, the world's greatest peace-making body was created during it -- the United Nations.  And here in the U.S., the “living room war,” Viet Nam, coupled with the largest generation of adolescents ever to grace American society, ended the forcible induction of young men into the military. ^[15]

With the recent discovery of our earliest ancestor, Ardi, our biological and social lives exist in a 4.4 million year now. Our physical bodies “evolve” in the womb along the same lines as did our species and, once born, we carry with us our earliest organs. ^[16] Most critical of these to conflict escalation and avoidance is our “fight-flight” mechanism – the amygdala.^[17] And the most pertinent biological agents to promote the collaborative resolution of conflict are our “mirror neurons” which

 provide a powerful biological foundation for the evolution of culture . . . absorb[ing] it directly, with each generation teaching the next by social sharing, imitation and observation.

 ^[18]

As “exquisitely social creatures,” our “survival depends on understanding the actions, intentions and emotions of others.” Id. That our misunderstandings and cognitive biases -- mentioned by Volokh on Paternalism and Michael Carbone on reactive devaluation at Mediation Strategies this week -- threaten our survival as a species is undeniable (cf. Lawyers Must Survive or Face Extinction at the Lawyerist). 

How we’ve manage to survive despite our tendency to misread one another’s actions, intentions and emotions, is often the subject of those who advise us how to choose and move juries -- here -- Anne Reed at Deliberations (explaining why "they" don't see things like "we" do here); and, the Jury Room (explaining why pain hurts more intensely when we believe it's been intentionally inflicted here). 

The Most Effective Conflict Resolution Technology is the Oldest

One of our true original gangsters, Al Capone, is reported to have said that “you can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone” and one of our greatest Presidents, Theodore Roosevelt said “speak softly and carry a big stick.”

Capone and Roosevelt didn't know it, but they were talking about the most effective (and most ancient) form of conflict resolution – tit for tat. In 1980, political Scientist Robert Axelrod asked game theory experts to submit computer programs designed to prevail in a game that provided the highest reward to cooperating pairs -- the famous Prisoner's Dilemma. (See also Max Kennerly's excellent post on Game Theory and Medical Malpractice Settlements at the Philadelphia Litigation and Trial Blog).

The winner of Axelrod's competition was a program named tit for tat.  Tit for tat was programmed to cooperate ^[19]  with its first encounter with any other programmed player.  It  rewarded cooperation with cooperation (just as networking will reward the savvy lawyer over at Chuck Newton's Ride the Third Wave) and punished non-cooperation with retaliation. Because Tit for Tat retaliated in the face of non-cooperation (just as a former employee did according to Hell Hath No Fury at Chicago Law Blogger) it was never repeatedly victimized. And because Tit for Tat “forgave” non-cooperators upon their return to cooperative game playing (as some believe Mr. Polanski should be forgiven over at the Marquette U. Law School Faculty Blog) it never got locked into mutually costly chains of mutual betrayal. ^[20]

As Robert Wright, author of The Moral Animal explained, had Tit for Tat been tossed into the game with 50 steadfast non-cooperators, there would have been a 49-way tie for first place. But none of the players' programs failed to cooperate in at least some circumstances, leaving Tit for Tat the clear victor.  According to Wright, humans, like the programs in Axelrod's competition, are evolutionarily “designed” to cooperate under at least some circumstances. The engine and benefit of cooperation is present in our neurochemistry.  When scientists observed the brain activity of volunteers playing the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, for instance, they found that the participants' “reward circuits” were activated and their impulsive "me first" circuits inhibited when they cooperated. Cooperation, retaliation, forgiveness and a return to cooperation. Tit for Tat. 

Laws and Lawyers

First and most importantly, I suppose, are the social media signs that you're "tweeting" like a lawyer over at the Social Media Law Student Blog.  Why first or important?  Know thyself.  Everything else follows that.

We don't "dis" lawyers here at the Negotiation Blog.  We simply remind ourselves that our primary purpose is the promotion of justice, with a stable societal order closely behind.  Most people don't understand, for instance, that Shakespeare's famous the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers was not an insult.  In King Henry IV, Act IV, Scene II, Shakespeare's sentiment was not his own, but that of a revolutionary who wished to destroy the social order.

The historic "present" of laws and lawyers is in the thousands, not simply the hundreds, of years. Hammurabi (make of his choice for the memorialization of his laws what you will) was the sixth king of Babylon, remembered for creating -- in his own name (and likeness?) - the first written and systematic legal code. 

These laws provided for a mix of physical punishment - 60 lashes with an ox hide whip - ‘measure for measure’ awards (still with us in the form of lethal injection as covered by The StandDown Texas Project) – eye for eye, bone fracture for bone fracture – and monetary compensation – 20 shekels for tooth injuries – (preserved by workplace injury awards such as those discussed at the Workers Compensation Blog) depended not only upon the type of injury, but the social classes involved in the loss, i.e., ‘measure for measure’ sanctions were specified for losses among the upper classes while monetary awards were required for losses caused to and by commoners (reminding us that disrespect still too often turns on social status or "outsider" classification as discussed at Balkinization this week).  ^[23] 

For the wrongful killing of another, for instance, the victim’s kin were paid according to the social status of the deceased party. Thus the ‘man price’ for killing a peasant was 200 shillings and that for a nobleman 1200 shillings. Payments were not, however, tailored to the loss, but fixed according to types of affront, a distinction we continue to make when we punish intentional torts more severely than negligent ones.  ^[24]>

Criminal law and civil, it all comes down to a process that is "due" (a topic covered in a blistering post about tea-partiers and other "protectors" of the Constitution at the Criminal Jurisdiction Law Blog) and a set of guidelines against which we can exercise some small degree of control over our own commercial and personal futures (like those subject of Delays Not "Party Time, Excellent" for Subcontractor at the Construction Contract Review).

Lawyers, litigators and trial lawyers are too often demonized by the ADR community as if you could get someone to sit down to negotiate without first pointing the gun of litigation at their heads; I salute you (and myself, for that matter!) for bringing us all to the bargaining table.  See Steve Mehta's recent post at Mediation Matters, Factors When Peace Makes Sense for a note that touches upon the symbiotic relationship between litigation and mediation, litigators and mediators.

I shouldn't cite single legal blogs twice, but I cannot resist this quote of Scott Greenfield's on another pundit's view of the future lawyers have in store for them, i.e., 

shucking oysters for a living if we don't accept a future of lawyers being piece workers in factories, sending our work off to Bangalore in pdf files and complementing people on their choice of forms at Legal Zoom.

Legal Rebels:  the Sky is Falling at Simple Justice.  Charon QC also weighs in on the ABA Legal Rebels project here.

Arbitration

Which came first? Public civil trials or private arbitrations? You’ll be surprised, I’ll wager, to hear that arbitration was one of the earliest forms of dispute resolution, practiced by the juris consults of the Roman Empire. Roman arbitration predates the adversarial system of common law by more than a thousand years. ^[25]

Ah, the glory of Rome! The juris consulti were (like too many mediators) amateurs who dabbled in dispute resolution, raising the question whether they (and we) should be certified or regulated as Diane Levin asks at The Mediation Channel this week.  The Roman hobbyists gave legal opinions (responsa) to all comers (a practice known as publice respondere). They also served the needs of Roman judges and governors would routinely consult with advisory panels of jurisconsults before rendering decisions. Thus, the Romans – god bless them! - were the first to have a class of people who spent their days thinking about legal problems (an activity some readers will recall Ralph Nader calling "mental gymnastics in an iron cage").

18th Century Dispute Resolution Technology:  The (Inevitably Polarizing) Adversarial System

It was Buckminster Fuller who famously opined that the "significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."  If you keep this aphorism in mind for the remainder of this post, you'll likely have some extraordinarily innovative comments to make in the comment section below.

As the Law Guru wiki reminds us, we can trace the adversarial system to the "medieval mode of trial by combat, in which some litigants were allowed a champion to represent them."  We owe our present day adversarialism, however, to the common law's use of the jury - the power of argumentation replacing the power of the sword.

The Act abolishing the infamous Star Chamber in 1641 also granted every "freeman" the right to trial by "lawful judgment of his peers" or by the "law of the land" before the Crown could "take[] or imprison[]" him or "disseis[e] [him] of his freehold or liberties, or free customs."  Nor could he any longer be "outlawed or exciled or otherwise destroyed."  Nor could the King "pass upon him or condemn him." 

English colonies like our own adopted the jury trial system and we, of course, enshrined that system in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments.  Whether this 17th century dispute resolution technology can be fine-tuned to keep abreast of 21st century dispute creation technology (particularly in the quickly moving area of intellectual property) remains one of the pressing questions of legal and ADR policy and practice, particularly in a week in which a Superior Court verbally punished the lawyers before it for filing The Most Oppressive Motion Ever Presented (see the Laconic Law Blog).  The motion? 

Defendants['] . . . motion for summary judgment/summary adjudication, seeking adjudication of 44 issues, most of which were not proper subjects of adjudication.  Defendants’ separate statement was 196 pages long, setting forth hundreds of facts, many of them not material—as defendants’ own papers conceded.  And the moving papers concluded with a request for judicial notice of 174 pages.  All told, defendants’ moving papers were 1056 pages.

Id. (and ouch!)  On a less Dickensian note (think Bleak House) take a look at the IP Maximizer's post on IP litigation not being smart source of revenue for inventors. 

Mediator, author and activist, Ken Cloke, suggests that interest-based resolutions to conflict must replace power and rights based resolutions if we expect to create a future in which justice prevails.  As Ken wrote in Conflict Revolution:

Approaching evil and injustice from an interest-based perspective means listening to the deeper truths that gave rise to them, extending compassion even to those who were responsible for evils or injustices, and seeking not merely to replace one evil or injustice with another, but to reduce their attractiveness by designing outcomes, processes, and relationships that encourage adversaries to work collaboratively to satisfy their interests.

Evil and injustice can therefore be considered byproducts of reliance on power or rights, and failures or refusals to learn and evolve.

All political systems generate chronic conflicts that reveal their internal weaknesses, external pressures, and demands for evolutionary change. Power- and rights-based systems are adversarial and unstable, and therefore avoid, deny, resist, and defend themselves against change. As a result, they suppress conflicts or treat them as purely interpersonal, leaving insiders less informed and able to adapt, and outsiders feeling they were treated unjustly and contemplating evil in response.

As pressures to change increase, these systems must either adapt, or turn reactionary and take a punitive, retaliatory attitude toward those seeking to promote change, delaying their own evolution. Only interest-based systems are fully able to seek out their weaknesses, proactively evolve, transform conflicts into sources of learning, and celebrate those who brought them to their attention.

These are the words I leave with the readers of Blawg Review #234 because they are the ones that informed my personal and professional transformation from a legal career based on rights and remedies to one based upon interests and consensus. 

Whatever my own personal 200-year present was, is and will be, it is pointed in the direction of peace with justice, with an enormous and probably unwarranted optimism best expressed by the man after whom my law school was named:  Martin Luther King, Jr.  - the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.

Blawg Review has information about next week's host, and instructions how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues. Next week's host, Counsel to Counsel, will devote its round-up of the week's best legal posts to the Great Recession.

Although a California Court may properly sanction a non-party insurance carrier who possesses the authority to settle litigation for its failure to participate in a mandatory settlement conference

In sum, even were we to agree with the trial court's assessment of the conduct of counsel and the [insurance] adjuster, the failure to increase a settlement offer or to otherwise participate meaningfully in settlement negotiations violates no rule of court and is not a proper basis for an award of sanctions.11 (See, e.g., Triplett v. Farmers Ins. Exchange (1994) 24 Cal.App.4th 1415, 1424 [“[w]e eschew any notion that a court may effectively force an unwilling party to settle by raising the specter of a post hoc determination that failure to do so will be evidence of failure to participate in good faith”]; Sigala v. Anaheim City School Dist., supra, 15 Cal.App.4th at p. 669 [“„[a] court may not compel a litigant to settle a case, but it may direct him to engage personally in settlement negotiations, provided the conditions for such negotiations are otherwise reasonable‟”].) [Defendant] filed an appropriate settlement conference statement; her lawyer and Mercury [the insurance carrier] attended the conference and participated in it. While the trial court‟s frustration at the parties‟ lack of movement is understandable, no more was required.
 

In particular, the Court of Appeal, held that the Court was not at liberty to "judge" whether the defendant and its carrier "should have" offered more than had previously been offered at a mediation either because the case was "worth" more or because the offer was so low in light of the attorneys fees and costs that would likely be incurred at trial.

I believe most mediators would approve of this ruling, even though it applies only to settlement conferences and not to mediations, the latter of which is protected from the Court's inquiry by Evidence Code section 1119.  Whether or not a mediator, a settlement judge, a party or a trial judge believes a defendant "should" offer more or a plaintiff "should" accept less by way of settlement, should not form the basis of an award of sanctions.  Not only would such a rule decrease citizens' trust and respect for the Courts, whose job it presumably is to provide a forum in which litigated disputes may be tried, such a rule would impermissibly chill the parties' Constitutional right to a jury trial.  

These motions are so difficult to oppose that I've seen a target defendant threaten a marginal player (my client) with sanctions just for challenging the target's very low six-figure settlement in an eight-figure antitrust action.

It looks like low value settlements got just a little bit harder to defend yesterday when the Second District Court of Appeal reversed a trial court's good faith settlement finding in  Long Beach Memorial Medical Center v. Superior Court (Conners).

Best quotation:  "The hospital contends that the physicians‟ $200,000 settlement -- representing 2 percent of plaintiffs‟ $10 million damages estimate -- was so far out of the “ballpark” it was not even in the parking lot."  With a first runner-up to "If section 877.6 is to serve the ends of justice, it must prevent a party from purchasing protection from its indemnification obligation at bargain-basement prices."

The Court of Appeal relied upon the following "facts" in finding that the trial court abused its considerable discretion in granting a good faith motion to defendant physicians in light of defendant hospital's opposition.

• payment of $200,000 in settlement for a $10 million claim, which the appellate court found to be "wholly disproportionate."  As the Court opined "[e]ven a slight probability of liability on [the settling doctor's] part would warrant a contribution more significant than 2 percent."
•  the "evidence" supporting the court's finding that the settling physician's probable fault was "not de minimis,"  which appears to have been based upon Plaintiff's attorney's fault analysis (not generally known for its unbiased nature) and the physicians' counsel's candid (?) suggestion that his clients' contribution to a global settlement might be in the range of $1.5 million;
• the availability of $2 million in coverage, which "militated against a good faith determination" because the settlement constituted only 10% of available policy limits [carrier alert here!];
• the non-settling Hospital's contention that the physicians and their attorneys engaged in "bad faith tactics" during two mediation sessions -- a factor the appellate court acknowledged it was barred by mediation confidentiality from considering -- but which it neatly avoided by concentrating on post-mediation negotiations; /*
• the timing of the physicians' settlement offer, which suggested to the appellate court that their "reason for entering into the settlement with plaintiffs was to cut off the hospital's . . .  right to indemnity from the physicians" (I thought that was a legitimate reason to settle litigation but see the Court's citation to Mattco Forge, stating that when a defendant  “enters into a disproportionately low settlement with the plaintiff solely to obtain immunity from the cross-complaint, the inference that the settlement was not made in good faith is difficult to avoid.” Mattco, supra (emphasis added); and,
• a consideration I've never seen defeat a good faith motion before - that a settlment "dictated by the tactical advantage of removing a deep-pocket defendant . . . is not made in 'good faith' consideration of the relevant liability of all parties. . . ." (leading to the question whether we're now required to consider the interests of clients other than our own in entering into a settlement agreement on a contested claim)

If this case isn't depublished (an unfortunate California practice) or taken up for review, it will bear re-reading and deeper thinking about the stategy and tactics of breaking away from the mob to cut a separate deal beneficial to one's own client without "consider[ing] . . the relevant liability of all parties . . . "

Comments welcome!!

________________

*/  This is a good place to note the importance of either indicating in the parties' post-mediation written negotiations that the mediation is continuing (hence the communications remain absolutely protected) or that the mediation has concluded (hence bringing those post-mediation settlement negotiations outside the scope of the strictly enforced mediation confidentiality restrictions).

Trial court lacked authority to review discretionary, prehearing order by arbitrator, who imposed stay on arbitration of dispute concerning uninsured motorist policy until plaintiff--who was driving on work-related business in company car provided by employer when rear ended--pursued workers’ compensation benefits in light of Insurance Code Sec. 11580.2.

Briggs v. Resolution Remedies

Like that pesky appeal where the Court called my client a "school yard bully" for failing to stipulate to the genuine nature of the insurance policies at issue (and no I am not providing a link to that one).  Ordered it published too. Grrrrrrrr.

I'm filing this one under "Advice to Young Lawyers" in the hope that they do not have to learn how to ignite the appellate court's wrath the hard way.

Hey!  Let's all be careful out there!

From the Los Angeles Daily Journal

November 21, 2008

CONFIDENTIALITY QUESTION HEADED BACK TO TRIAL COURT  By Greg Katz

LOS ANGELES - The state Supreme Court has denied review of an appellate decision that had become a cause celebre for mediators concerned about confidentiality precedents.

Instead, the case will head back for a new trial that includes a dispute over whether a hand-drawn chart, created in a probate mediation and initialed dozens of times by the parties, should have been admissible as evidence.

 A trial court had said that it was not, but the 2nd District Court of Appeal overturned the decision, saying it was in effect a settlement agreement and admissible under Evidence Code Section 1123(c). Thottam v. Thottam, B196933 and B196934 (Cal App. 2nd Dist., filed Sept. 3, 2008).

Many mediators expressed concern that the appellate ruling hurts mediation confidentiality by making draft documents admissible, and the case drew amicus letters from pro-ADR lobbying group California Dispute Resolution Council and others.

But the high court Wednesday denied review. 

Tyna Orren, who won the appeal for Los Angeles-based attorney and political activist Peter Thottam, said she was happy but unsurprised that the court didn't take up the case. 

"The reason mediators don't need to be concerned is that the opinion now tells them precisely what they need to do to avoid what happened in Thottam. Nobody should sign anything which leaves an opening for anything to be divulged," she said.

The 2nd District panel reasoned that the document appeared to be a settlement agreement, and that the parties had signed a premediation agreement allowing for the admissibility of mediation evidence that supported any agreements reached. That qualified the document for an exception in mediation confidentiality statutes.

"Whether or not the document contained all necessary details for enforcement, it certainly contained adequate manifestation of mutual consent to material terms which were capable of being made certain," making it a settlement agreement, Presiding Justice Norman L. Epstein wrote for the unanimous panel.

Justices Thomas L. Wilhite Jr. and Steven C. Suzukawa joined in the opinion.

Beverly Hills-based mediator Victoria Pynchon, who closely followed the case, said it was more about interpretation of the mediation agreement than about confidentiality, that the Supreme Court has vigorously defended the state's confidentiality laws in the past.

Attorneys should rely strictly on those laws when drafting mediation agreements, she said. "Just quote the statute or refer to the statute. Don't get fancy."

Stephen L. Kaplan of Laguna Niguel's Hicks, Mims, Kaplan & Burns, who had petitioned for review, said he was disappointed but expected that the new trial would go in favor of his clients, as the first one had.

The only difference: "There'll be one more piece of evidence," Kaplan said.

greg_katz@dailyjournal.com

Democratic Party control could ban mandatory arbitration, expert says

11/17/08

Jan Dennis, Business & Law Editor
217-333-0568; jdennis@illinois.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Michael LeRoy, a professor of law and of labor and employment relations, says Democratic Party control in Washington could restore lawsuits as an option for workers and consumers now forced to settle disputes through mandatory arbitration that gives employers and businesses an unfair edge.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Democratic Party control in Washington could restore lawsuits as an option for workers and consumers now forced to settle disputes through mandatory arbitration that gives employers and businesses an unfair edge, a University of Illinois labor law expert says.

Michael LeRoy predicts a bill sponsored by Democrats that would bar companies from imposing arbitration will likely be approved next year when Democrats take over the White House and add to their majorities in Congress.

The measure, introduced last year but stalled by the prospect of a Bush administration veto, would halt a shift that has grown since a 1991 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing firms to require arbitration rather than courts to resolve disputes, he said.

For full article click here.

Here's the summary of the bill courtesy of the Consumerist:

Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007 - Declares that no predispute arbitration agreement shall be valid or enforceable if it requires arbitration of: (1) an employment, consumer, or franchise dispute, or (2) a dispute arising under any statute intended to protect civil rights or to regulate contracts or transactions between parties of unequal bargaining power.

Declares, further, that the validity or enforceability of an agreement to arbitrate shall be determined by a court, under federal law, rather than an arbitrator, irrespective of whether the party resisting arbitration challenges the arbitration agreement specifically or in conjunction with other terms of the contract containing such agreement.

Exempts arbitration provisions in collective bargaining agreements from this Act.

Excerpts from Kullar v. Foot Locker Retail, Inc. below.  Comment will follow.

[T]he fact that the settlement was reached during mediation to which Evidence Code section 1119 applies does not eliminate the court’s obligation to evaluate the terms of the settlement and to ensure that they are fair, adequate and reasonable. If some relevant information is subject to a privilege that the court must respect, other data must be provided that will enable the court to make an independent assessment of the adequacy of the settlement terms.

[T]he fact that communications were made during the mediation and writings prepared for use in the mediation that are inadmissible and not subject to compulsory production does not mean that the underlying data, not otherwise privileged, is also immune from production. (Evid. Code, § 1120 [“Evidence otherwise admissible or subject to discovery outside of a mediation . . . shall not be or become inadmissible or protected from disclosure solely by reason of its introduction or use in a mediation . . .]; Rojas v. Superior Court (2004) 33 Cal.4th 407, 417; Wimsatt v. Superior Court (2007) 152 Cal.App.4th 137, 157-158.)

Foot Locker’s payroll records, for example, if relevant to the quantification of the claims being settled, are subject to discovery and may be introduced in opposition to the settlement even if they were disclosed to class counsel during the mediation, and even if class counsel was shown only a summary or analysis of those records that is not itself subject to production because prepared for use in the mediation.

                           *                           *                      *

Following the opportunity for limited discovery, the trial court should redetermine whether the proposed settlement is fair, adequate and reasonable. The court may and undoubtedly should continue to place reliance on the competence and integrity of counsel, the involvement of a qualified mediator, and the paucity of objectors to the settlement. But the court must also receive and consider enough information about the nature and magnitude of the claims being settled, as well as the impediments to recovery, to make an independent assessment of the reasonableness of the terms to which the parties have agreed.

We do not suggest that the court should attempt to decide the merits of the case or to substitute its evaluation of the most appropriate settlement for that of the attorneys. However, as the court does when it approves a settlement as in good faith under Code of Civil Procedure section 877.6, the court must at least satisfy itself that the class settlement is within the “ballpark” of reasonableness. (See Tech-Bilt, Inc. v. Woodward-Clyde & Associates (1985) 38 Cal.3d 488, 499-500.)

While the court is not to try the case, it is “ ‘called upon to consider and weigh the nature of the claim, the possible defenses, the situation of the parties, and the exercise of business judgment in determining whether the proposed settlement is reasonable.’ ” (City of Detroit v. Grinnell Corp., supra, 495 F.2d at p. 462, italics added.) This the court cannot do if it is not provided with basic information about the nature and magnitude of the claims in question and the basis for concluding that the consideration being paid for the release of those claims represents a reasonable compromise.

By remanding we do not suggest that the proposed settlement ultimately may not pass muster. We hold only that the trial court may not finally approve the settlement agreement until provided with sufficient information to assure itself that the terms of the agreement are indeed fair, adequate and reasonable.

Civil Procedure Sec. 998--which permits a defendant to shift costs to plaintiff if plaintiff rejects a settlement offer and then fails to obtain a more favorable judgment--does not eliminate substantive requirements for awarding attorney fees to a prevailing Fair Employment and Housing Act defendant; prevailing defendant in FEHA action is only entitled to recover fees if plaintiff rejects defendant's settlement offer, fails to obtain a more favorable judgment, and plaintiff's action was without any legal or factual foundation. Mangano v. Verity, Inc.
 
 

(while we're walking down memory lane anyway, "Have It Your Way" from 1976) 

When I ask litigators why they don't choose arbitration over litigation before unpredictable judges in a crowded court, their answer invariably is "because I can't appeal the ruling."   We cling to appellate review even though we appeal fewer cases than we try -- which is a very small percentage of our case load as it is. 

Not surprising, however, we litigators, as Max Kennerly recently noted, tend to be risk-averse, not risk-embracing (h/t Blawg Review # 174).  To give up that one last chance for our client to be vindicated and for us to be triumphant is generally just too much for us. 

Now we can have our arbitration cake and and follow it up with appellate ice cream.  Yesterday, the California Supreme Court in Cable Connection, Inc. v. DirecTV  held that arbitrating parties' agreement to seek appellate review of legal errors is enforceable in California State Courts despite its uneforceability in federal court.  As the Supreme Court explained:

On the first question, the United States Supreme Court has held that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA; 9 U.S.C. § 1 et seq.) does not permit the parties to expand the scope of review by agreement. (Hall Street Associates, L.L.C. v. Mattel, Inc. (2008) __ U.S. __ [128 S.Ct. 1396, 1404-1405] (Hall Street).)

However, the high court went on to say that federal law does not preclude “more searching review based on authority outside the [federal] statute,” including “state statutory or common law.” (Id. at p. __ [128 S.Ct. at p. 1406].) In Moncharsh v. Heily & Blase (1992) 3 Cal.4th 1 (Moncharsh), this court reviewed the history of the California Arbitration Act (CAA; Code Civ. Proc., § 1280 et seq.).

We adhere to our holding in Moncharsh, recognizing that contractual limitations may  alter the usual scope of review.

The California rule is that the parties may obtain judicial review of the merits by express agreement. There is a statutory as well as a contractual basis for this rule; one of the grounds for review of an arbitration award is that “[t]he arbitrators  exceeded their powers.”  (§§ 1286.2, subd. (a)(4), 1286.6, subd. (b).)

Here, the parties agreed that “[t]he arbitrators shall not have the power to commit errors of law or legal reasoning, and the award may be vacated or corrected on appeal to a court of competent jurisdiction for any such error.” This contract provision is enforceable under state law, and we reverse the contrary ruling of the Court of Appeal.

AUGUST 25, 2008 | FORUM

If You Know the Case Law, Litigation Doesn't Have to be Robotic

By Victoria Pynchon 

Here in California, there's no stronger rule of confidentiality than that applied to a mediation. It cannot be impliedly waived like most privileges, including the near-sacred attorney-client privilege. Simmons v. Ghaderi, 2008 DJDAR 11107. You cannot be estopped from relying on it. Eisendrath v. Superior Court, 109 Cal.App.4th 351 (2003). And if you want your mediated settlement agreement enforced, you must strictly comply with the requirements of Evidence Code Section 1123. Fair v. Bakhtiari, 40 Cal.4th 189 (2006).

Insurance policy-holder counsel Kirk Pasich of Dickstein Shapiro has criticized nearly all recent interpretations of mediation confidentiality by the California Supreme Court on the ground that they permit insurance carriers to use mediation proceedings to engage in acts of bad faith.

"Why should a carrier get a license to act in bad faith in mediation," Pasich asked, adding, "Cases settled, and still settle, in mandatory settlement conferences without that same shield. I don't think a process should exist that encourages, rather than discourages, a party from acting in bad faith."

Why, indeed?

If you do not understand the differences between settlement conferences and mediations, you are not alone. My informal surveys indicate that litigators believe there's no difference whatsoever between the two and few mediators are able to distinguish between them despite their training in the field. Nor have California's courts been of any real assistance.

What's in a name? Here, plenty. The application of California's Rules of Evidence to mediations has such significant potential economic consequences that mediator and litigator malpractice actions are surely looming on the horizon.

What type of misbehavior can occur in a mediation? Here are just a few examples: One party can make a misrepresentation of material fact on which the other relies in entering into a settlement agreement; as Pasich notes, an insurance carrier can act in bad faith; one mediating party could tortiously interfere with a third party's contract or prospective economic advantage; or the mediating parties can enter into a collusive settlement agreement, depriving the settling parties' co-defendants from learning facts necessary to challenge the settlement in a "good faith" hearing.

Even if all parties have expressed complete agreement during the mediation, which they then memorialize in a term sheet, absent strict compliance with the requirements of Evidence Code Section 1123, no evidence probative of that agreement will be admissible in a California court.
If the mediating parties are engaged in a settlement conference, none of this potentially bad behavior would be protected.

Given the potentially significant adverse economic consequences that can flow from a mediation, California's courts have clarified the differences between the two procedures, right?

Not so much.

If you have a DJ subscription, continue reading here.

Enforcement of Mediated Settlement Agreements in California - Get more Legal Forms

precludes recovery of prevailing party's fifty percent share of the referee's fees as an item of costs if the parties have agreed in the reference stipulation to split the referee fees.

Solution?  Include in your agreement a provision indicating that the prevailing party in the litigation will be entitled to recover its half of the referee's fees.

See Carr Business Enterprises, Inc. v. City of Chowchilla with gratitude to the Met News for briefing these cases for us and to LACBA for putting them in our in-box every evening.

Thanks to the LexisNexis Insurance Center Staff

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty welcomed the First District Court of Appeal's decision affirming the Office of Insurance Regulation's denial of United Insurance Company of America's request to include a mandatory arbitration clause in its life insurance contracts.

Arbitration would have forced disgruntled policyholders to bypass the legal system to settle disagreements. United appealed OIR's action and the court affirmed the denial.

"Policyholders have fewer rights and constitutional protections under the more restrictive arbitration process than they would have in a civil court proceeding," said McCarty. "I'm pleased that the Court made it clear that Florida consumers should not be shut out of the traditional legal system to press their grievances against insurance companies."

Although United argued that federal arbitration law superseded the Florida law that allows policyholders to use the courts for contractual disputes, the Court stated that the matter "specifically relates to the business of insurance" and was, therefore, exempt from being superseded by federal law

Just in case you're a local Southern California mediator with nothing planned tomorrow morning, come and join us at the Town Hall Meeting at Pepperdine.  DJ article by the best friend ADR ever had in L.A., Greg Katz, below.  See Lee Jay Berman's calendar of events here.

Town Hall Meeting Will Address Mediator Expertise
By Greg Katz
Daily Journal Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES - Do mediators need law degrees? Should neutrals who mediate business disputes have experience litigating those types of cases? Or, is it enough simply to have effective mediation skills and great insight into people and their interests? These questions have remained a topic of controversy as the practice of mediation has proliferated over the past few decades, with the field's most highly sought practitioners coming from the ranks of lawyers, psychologists, CEOs and general contractors.

They re-emerged recently, when the Los Angeles County Superior Court began requiring nonattorneys on its mediator panel to get supplemental legal training.

Never ones to shy away from conflict, local mediators will convene to discuss and debate those questions Saturday at a town hall meeting called "Mediator expertise: What does it take?" The meeting, which convenes at 8:30 a.m. at the Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, is the sixth annual town hall staged by the Southern California Mediation Association, the state's largest organization of mediators.

"It's an extremely hot issue," said attorney-mediator Phyllis Pollack, a member of the association's board who helped organize the event.

The town hall will kick off with a presentation on the history of mediation by attorney-mediator Richard Millen, who has been called "the Yoda of the mediation world" and holds that subject matter expertise is not an important factor in mediation. After Millen's presentation, there will be three panel discussions on various aspects of mediator expertise. Among the mediators scheduled to be on the panels are Edward Davis, a former transportation company executive; Joan Kessler, who holds a Ph.D. in communications and Alexander Polsky, who practiced criminal and civil law as an attorney. Lee Jay Berman, who came to mediation through the real estate world and never attended law school, will be the mediators' moderator.

Does that mean the association doesn't think mediators need legal training? "Like everything else in life, SCMA takes no position," Pollack joked. "We have members who are both attorneys and nonattorneys. We welcome all mediators of all stripes."

The event is free and ends at noon. Attendees can register at scmediation.org.

What on earth would we do without them?

Where employment-related dispute arose between employer and employee who had executed employment agreement containing a mandatory arbitration clause, and employee wrote letter requesting arbitration to which employer responded by telling employee that it did not consider his claim ripe for arbitration, district court's order—after employee's termination—denying employer's motion to compel arbitration on ground that employer previously breached its agreement and waived right to arbitrate disputes was error because employee did not properly initiate arbitration under agreement's terms; district court improperly concluded employer waived arbitration where it was debatable whether employer acted inconsistently with right to arbitrate, employer initiated arbitration immediately upon learning of suit, and employer's actions did not prejudice employee.

Cox v. Ocean View Hotel Corporation - filed July 23, 2008

In late June, the Missouri Court of Appeals addressed the legal enforceability of a program adopted by Hallmark requiring employees to arbitrate employment disputes. The court held that Hallmark's ADR program did not constitute a contract and that there was no consideration to bind the employees to the promise to arbitrate claims.

The employer's arguments in favor of enforcement in this case were very much like those argued by O'Melveny & Myers here in California with the same result in the Ninth Circuit  --  the employee was not bound by an agreement by continuing to work after all employees were notified that their continued work for the company would constitute consent to being bound by the arbitration provision.

Check out the ContractsProf Blog analysis here.  We particularly like this comment by the Court:

The idea that an employer can create any legal contract it dares to create (based on a condition of at-will employment) cannot be sustained upon reflection. Imagine, for instance, an employer publishing a memo to employees stating that:

Anyone who continues to work for us through next Monday will be conclusively deemed to have agreed, as a condition of remaining in our employ through that date, that you will contribute twenty dollars per month over the next ten years to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), whether or not you remain employed here during that time. If you do not agree, you will need to resign your employment immediately, because by continuing to work, you are agreeing.

Yes, I did see the Beatles play the Hollywood Bowl in 1964, with an emphasis on SEE -- couldn't hear a thing!  Just a little nostalgia for my boomer readers.
 

Today, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous ruling in the long-awaited Simmons v. Ghaderi case about which I've commented on many occasions -- both on the importance of the confidentiality laws the Supreme Court held were air-tight today and on the process itself as a common example of a failed mediation proceeding.

Highlights from the opinion:

• "The Legislature chose to promote mediation by ensuring confidentiality rather than adopt a scheme to ensure good behavior in the mediation and litigation process."
• [T]he legislative history of the mediation confidentiality statutes as a whole reflects a desire that section 1115 et seq. be strictly followed in the interest of efficiency. By laying down clear rules, the Legislature intended to reduce litigation over the admissibility and disclosure of evidence regarding settlements and communications that occur during mediation. (citation omitted).  Allowing courts to craft judicial exceptions to the statutory rules would run counter to that intent."
• In Foxgate,  we reasoned we "were bound to respect the Legislature’s policy choice to protect mediation confidentiality rather than create a procedure that encouraged good faith participation in mediation. Thus, we held that evidence of a party’s bad faith during the mediation may not be admitted or considered." 

Here's the appellate decision that was reversed on nearly every ground raised in Justice Aldrich's compellingly well-reasoned dissent.

Here are our previous commentaries:

Take Steps to Ensure Mediation Agreements Can Be Enforced (co-authored by local arbitrator and mediator Deborah Rothman, first published in the Daily Journal)

You Say Waiver, I Say Estoppel, Let's Call the Whole Thing Wrong -- Another Look at Simmons v. Ghaderi  

If I Settle, It Will Mean that I Killed Her -- Anatomy of a Failed Medical Malpractice Mediation, at the National Institute for Advanced Conflict Resolution

Here's a veiw that opposes my own -- Kirk Pasich Replies:  the Mediation Privilege and Bad Faith Carrier Conduct.

As Hunt writes, 

The standard residential purchase contract in California is produced by the California Association of Realtors® (CAR). It contains two sections that are easy to overlook or to take as “boilerplate”, but that can be very important if things go awry between the parties. One of those sections deals with attorney fees, providing that, in the event of any proceeding between buyer and seller, the prevailing party shall be entitled to attorney fees and costs from the non-prevailing party. The attorney fee section contains an exception, however, and that exception is spelled out in the portion of the contract referring to mediation. There it is said that, if either party initiates an action “without first attempting to resolve the matter through mediation, or refuses to mediate after a request has been made, then that party shall not be entitled to recover attorney fees… .” [my emphasis] /*

When Mr. Thrifty and I purchased our house in '02, we were presented with one of these form contracts.  I'm a lazy form contract signator myself.  Negotiation training or not, I generally assume these contracts are "take it or leave it" and I sign them accordingly.  /**

Not Mr. Thrifty.

"What's the procedure?"  I recall him pressing our real estate agent.    "When is the demand for mediation supposed to be made and how are the parties supposed to conduct it and what happens if the parties can't reach agreement on the mediator to conduct the process?"

He was having none of it. 

"I'm crossing it out," he said, as blue ink flowed over the mediation provision and our agent let out of small gasp of dismay.

By that time, everyone was so "bought in" to the sale, that Mr. Thrifty's effort to strike  the form language prevailed.  No mediation necessary in this household!

Beware of Form Contract Language

As Bob Hunt explains, the Lange Court gave the back of its hand to the contention that it was "too difficult" to make the required demand for mediation.  

“If the [sellers] could be found and served with a lawsuit by mail, they could have been sent a mediation demand by mail[,]” [held the Court]  All that the plaintiff had to do was attempt to mediate before he filed suit; and he didn't. Quoting a related case, the court noted that the mediation provision “means what it says and will be enforced.” 

Though it's not surprising to find bare bones ADR provisions in industry form contracts -- bones so bear that their meaning must be litigated -- defeating the purpose of the summary proceedings provided for -- it is surprising to find attorneys continuing to paste form contract language into their client's negotiated agreements.  This is particularly troublesome when what's at stake -- the attorneys' fees -- makes the difference between bringing litigation or not or settling litigation or not.

If it's worth putting a clause into your contract, it's worth spending the time to imagine what might happen if circumstances triggering that clause arise.  If you're practicing in a firm with both transactional and litigation attorneys, I highly recommend that the wordsmiths run the "standard" ADR, attorney fee, choice of law, and venue provisions by the litigators who have undoubtedly already tested these provisions in the fire of conflict.  You won't be sorry you did.       

_______________________

*/  The case -- Lange v. Schilling -- was originally ordered not not to be published.  Had that Order stood, the case would not create precedent under California law.  As the reader of the linked opinion can see, however, it was subsequently ordered published and can be cited as authority. 

**/  The form contract language at issue reads as follows:

Buyer and Seller agree to mediate any dispute or claim arising between them out of this Agreement, or any resulting transaction, before resorting to arbitration or court action. . . . If, for any dispute or claim to which this paragraph applies, any party commences an action without first attempting to resolve the matter through mediation, or refuses to mediate after a request has been made, then that party shall not be entitled to recover attorney fees, even if they would otherwise be available to that party in any such action.

Head's up insurance carriers and their counsel!

Noting the benefits of appellate mediation and the desirability of participants attending in person, a California appellate court warned insurers in Campagnone v. Enjoyable Pools & Spas that even the potential of coverage requires a representative with full settlement authority to attend court-ordered appellate mediations in person, unless excused in writing by the mediator. Further, the court warned parties and counsel that they may also face sanctions if they fail to notify insurers with potential coverage about appellate mediations. The court noted that California’s strict mediation confidentiality provisions prevent mediators from disclosing whether anyone fails to attend, but that an aggrieved party may do so in seeking sanctions from the court. The court withheld sanctions in this case only because no previous opinion had spelled out these requirements, even though the insurer was only liable for amounts in excess of $3 million and the judgment in the trial court was $2.4 million.

Campagnone v. Enjoyable Pools & Spas, No. C055050 (Cal. App.3d Dist., May 30, 2008)


Thanks to Keith Seat Mediation Newsletter for the case.

And thanks to arbitrator and mediator extraordinaire Deborah Rothman for passing this along to me.  (speaking of gender politics, Deborah graduated with the first class of women to be admitted to Yale University)