Mediation

An ounce of mediation is worth a ton of litigation, Joseph Grynbaum. A pair of Christchurch philanthropists, the trustees of the charitable trust Gamma Foundation, have recently donated $1 million to the University of Otago, to help establish Legal Issue Centre, New Zealand first research centre focusing on improving the legal system.

Scenario 1

The plaintiff has found important clause in the lease agreement which was ignored. All attempts to get settlement short of legal action failed, so he sued. The plaintiff eventually won this case and has received 85 per cent of their claim. So what was the reason for donating the $1 million to help established the Legal Issues Centre? "This five year battle was "characterized by repeated delays cased by lawyers, and an impression the system did nothing to discourage a lack of candour and distortion on the part of lawyers and witnesses". The plaintiff said:" While we eventually won the case after putting in a lot of hard work, we came to the conclusion that the way the legal system and many lawyers operated was very unsatisfactory." They also have been influenced by High Court Judge, Justice John Hansen at the University of Otago last year in a public lecture, where Justice Hansen said he believe that New Zealand need radical rethink as to how we resolve disputes and that the law is no longer a profession, but a business.

"After considering Justice Hansen's comments and reading news media reports about how litigation had ruined the finances, health and lives of some people, we decided that the establishment of a Legal Issues Centre would be very worthwhile. We hope that the research findings will help influence changes to the legal system and that these changes will help bring about a legal system which serves the best interests of citizens, rather than serving the best interests of lawyers and the law" ,(plaintiff comment).

Following the case outlined above we can find a lots of criticism of civil litigation. Almost everyone in our society is familiar with litigation and its process. One party, the plaintiff, hires a lawyer to represent him in a lawsuit and also the other party, the respondent, hires another lawyer in the same matter. Anyone who has ever been involved in litigation knows that it is expensive, time consuming, emotionally draining and unpredictable. With litigation, until a judge or jury decides who is right and who is wrong, you are never certain of the outcome.

So the high costs, including substantially increased court fees, the long delays, often cause by layers, associated with the trials of civil matters often make litigation an impractical method of resolving disputes. It is not uncommon that trials related costs exceed the amount in dispute, that the parties are spending more to litigate than the cost to settle the matter.

"Traditional litigation is a mistake that must be corrected... For some disputes trials will be the only means, but for many claims trials by adversarial contest must in time go the way of the ancient ...