THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 27, 1995 TAG: 9503240010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
When two people attempt to settle a dispute through mediation, a key step is for the first person to describe the situation as he sees it and for the second person to repeat that description. Then the roles are reversed, with the second person describing the situation as he sees it and the first person repeating that description.
Each side has to listen to the other carefully in order to repeat the description.
With both sides listening, it's no wonder that mediation, aided by professional mediators, often settles noncriminal disputes more successfully, quicker and 10 times more cheaply than a judge can.
In a courtroom, lawyers talk. Opposing parties may testify, but they don't discuss matters with each other.
With mediation, the parties actually talk with each other and in a setting that feels less alien than a courtroom, with its strange rules and robes and ``hear-ye, hear-ye's.''
If all goes well, as it does in about 90 percent of mediation cases, opposing sides agree on a written contract that is legally binding.
Studies have shown mediated contracts are honored more often than judge-ordered settlements. One reason is that mediation generates less hostility between parties than trials do.
It's no wonder Hampton Roads courts are turning with increasing frequency to mediators to settle disputes that otherwise might drag on expensively in courtrooms. We applaud the use of mediation whenever it might work.
At 7 p.m. Tuesday, Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harry L. Carrico, a longtime advocate of mediation, will speak in Old Dominion University's Batten Arts and Letters Auditorium at a free forum titled ``The Arrival of Mediation in Virginia's Court System.''
The forum is co-sponsored by ODU and The Mediation Center of Hampton Roads, one of two South Hampton Roads organizations with state Supreme Court contracts to mediate disputes. The other is the Dispute Settlement Center, founded by, but now separate from, the Better Business Bureau of Greater Hampton Roads.
Also speaking at the forum will be four area judges, including Norfolk Circuit Judge Lydia C. Taylor, a mediation supporter.
She said of parties in mediation, ``Instead of having what they may see as an impersonal judge handing down judgment like Moses from on high, in essence these people take power over their own lives.'' Taylor said both sides may be asking for six or seven things. Despite her best efforts, she said, she might deny to one person that very thing that was most important to that person, and also deny to the other side that very thing that was most important to that person. But if both sides are talking with each other, she said, they can determine what is most important to both sides.
A divorced mother who settled a child-support and visitation dispute through mediation wrote to The Mediation Center of Hampton Roads:
``Mediation seems to bring both parties together in a climate of conciliation rather than hostility. . . . Hostilities are stirred up by lawyers bent on getting the best for their clients. Many times `the best' is not what is in the best interest of everyone, especially when children are involved.''
``Generally,'' said Chief Justice Carrico, ``almost any civil dispute is amenable to mediation.''
The water dispute between Virginia Beach and North Carolina is being mediated. If that attempt succeeds, we'll know anything is possible when people sit down to talk and listen. by CNB