A Dollar for Chalking! In May 2019, I posted a blog about a plaintiff who challenged a parking ticket on the grounds that chalking her tires by the parking police in the City of Saginaw, Michigan (“City”) violated her Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches as the City neither had [Read More]
Many years ago, Albert Mehrabian, now a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) determined that approximately 55% of our communication is non-verbal; 38% of it is vocal (tone) and 7% is words only, meaning body language can be very revealing. This simple fact played itself out [Read More]
Even though my students are training to become mediators, I raise the important issue of negotiation style with them; after all, as mediators, they are, in effect, negotiating with the parties. No doubt, these students did not give much thought to how their style of negotiating impacts their role as [Read More]
In pre pandemic days when mediations were held in person, mediators often provided snacks and goodies for the parties to nibble on throughout the day. For good reason! To increase the odds of reaching a settlement. A recent Harvard PONs blog post confirms that food plays a significant role in [Read More]
In a recent post, I discussed having a hypothetical “difficult” conversation with two relatives who ignored my husband and me at a family gathering. I assumed that we had offended them in some way rather than they simply disliking us on general principles. One of the last points I made [Read More]
A few weeks ago, my husband and I attended a family social gathering seeing extended family we had not seen in quite a long time. As one typically does, I went around to say “hello” to everyone, usually greeting them with a smile and a hug. However, when I went [Read More]
The ABA published another interesting article discussing the dismissal of a third-party complaint because the parties failed to mediate as required by their contract. Entitled “Failure to Mediate Causes Dismisses of Case” by Michael Stefanilo, Jr, the article (dated March 23,2022) highlights Rivas v CBK Lodge General Partner, LLC, U.S. [Read More]
For an upcoming book club discussion, I am reading Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy by Martin Indyk (Alfred K. Knopf, New York 2021). While I have a lot more reading to do to finish the book, I was struck by a passage [Read More]
