The High Court has held that correspondence marked “without prejudice save as to costs” and which described the conduct of prior “without prejudice” (WP) negotiations (including a mediation and subsequent discussions) was admissible in an application for costs against the claimant’s lawyers: Willers v Joyce & Ors [2019] EWHC 937 (Ch). The court accepted that … Read more
A trend toward combining alternative dispute resolution processes (typically mediation and arbitration) is gaining traction internationally and is being particularly driven in Asia by the Belt and Road Initiative. With China at the heart of the Belt and Road, a more consensus-driven approach to dispute resolution, reflecting Asian values and promoting mediation, looks set to … Read more
Hong Kong has published its long-awaited Code of Practice for third party funders and announced that amendments to the Arbitration Ordinance, which permit funding of Hong Kong arbitrations, will come fully into force on 1 February 2019. However, proposed amendments to the Mediation Ordinance (Cap. 620) regarding non-Hong Kong mediations, costs and disclosure of mediation communications … Read more
Jan O’Neill Professional Support Lawyer, London The Civil Justice Council’s ADR working group has released its final report on ADR and Civil Justice, following consultation on its interim report released last year. The broad mandate of the review was “to maintain the search for the right relationship between civil justice and ADR” and to … Read more
We are soon to have a new international regime for the enforcement of mediated settlement agreements. The UN Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation, which will be known as the Singapore Convention, was approved in June 2018 by UNCITRAL (the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law). It is expected to be open for … Read more
Further to our earlier post, the Singapore Convention has now been published. It will be signed in Singapore on 1 August 2019 and will come into effect six months after at least three states have ratified it. The drafters’ goal is for the Singapore Convention to be for mediation what the New York Convention is … Read more
Jan O’Neill Professional Support Lawyer, London The Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) has released the results of its Mediation Audit 2018, based on a survey of practising mediators in the UK. (The results of parallel surveys of lawyer attitudes to mediation, and of US practitioners’ views, are to be published separately). The audit is the eighth biennial survey CEDR has conducted in the last … Read more
Following our report on the Global Pound Conference series, which brought together over 4000 stakeholders at 28 conferences worldwide, our analysis of the Asia Pacific results reveals different demands in Asia and Oceania. Six Asia Pacific cities hosted conferences to assess how dispute resolution can be improved: Singapore; Hong Kong; Chandigarh, India; Bangkok, Thailand; Sydney, … Read more
