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Mediation and the Courts
Mark McGeoch and District Judge Raeside, 9 May 2006
We received an excellent presentation by Mark McGeoch and District Judge Raeside on the subject of Mediation and the Courts. District Judge Raeside is a Judge at Guildford Court and in charge of the Mediation business there. Mark is a member of RICS and a Chartered Arbitrator and the two had co-operated on Court assisted Mediation.
Mark opened the presentation by referring us to the cases of Dunnet v. Railtrack, Halsey v. Milton Keynes and more recently (April 2005) the case of Burchell & Bullard which considerably enforced the importance of lawyers and clients considering ADR as an alternative to Court procedures. Mark also drew our attention to the amendments to the CPR rules dealing with protocol at section 4.7 which now provides that the Court must consider what ADR steps have been taken by the parties when exercising their discretion on costs. Mark then gave us a brief review of the Mediation Awareness week presented by the Government last year and, following that, his liaisons with the Guildford County Court to set up Court assisted Mediation.
District Judge Raeside then addressed us from the point of view of the Court's outlook on Mediation. She felt that the family side of Mediation was extremely good but Mediation in civil matters was more problematic. The Judges were keen to encourage Mediation and, in her view, there was no case that could not be mediated. She referred to the Allocation Questionnaire (Court form) which provided a box to be completed as to whether Mediation had been attempted and following the recent amendment to the rules, it was up to herself and her colleagues to ensure that the message and importance of Mediation was brought home to the parties and their solicitors in the way they exercised their discretion on costs.
If a Mediation was agreed upon, the parties paid a fee of £250 each in her Courts. The appointments are rotated through the various groups of Mediators. The Court Service provided no money for setting up the scheme. One clerk had been assigned to administer it but it was an additional work load on top of her normal work load. The Government would simply not fund it. District Judge Raeside felt that the new CPR rules demanded a robustness in Judges in ensuring that parties complied with the rules. In particular, evidence would now be demanded by the Court of what steps in connection with ADR had been taken and what the reasons were for the parties not following them.
In this note, not all matters that were discussed can be recorded but following District Judge Raeside's address, Mark gave us a short account of some of the mediated cases which he had undertaken at the Court.
This was an extremely interesting talk and the Branch is extremely grateful to Mark McGeoch and District Judge Raeside for this very interesting insight into Court assisted Mediation in the Guildford Courts.
Reported by Rod O'Driscoll