Recently, I wrote about the lack of preparation. This week, I am taking that topic one step further: detachment! I had a bizarre mediation the other day. As usual it was a lemon law matter but this time it involved both the manufacturer and the dealer. Unlike many other instances, [Read More]
God, grant me the Serenity To accept the things I cannot change... Courage to change the things I can, And Wisdom to know the difference. (The Serenity Prayer) Several years ago, when my mother had severe dementia and was extremely ornery and contrary, my sister suggested that I read and [Read More]
Several times in the past, I have discussed the need for each party to prepare for mediation for it to be successful. As you may guess, I return to this topic again because I just conducted a mediation that went nowhere fast because plaintiff was not prepared. It truly did [Read More]
Many mediators in California will acknowledge that most parties in litigated cases do not like joint sessions and prefer to mediate using caucuses or separate sessions only. There are various reasons for this, among them a belief that counsel may lose control of the situation, that the joint session will [Read More]
As some of you may recall, the California Law Revision Commission issued its Tentative Recommendation late last year to create an exception to mediation confidentiality. However, the proposed statute could not find a sponsor and so never got introduced into the legislature. Instead, Senator Wieckowski introduced SB 954 on January [Read More]
My husband is known as an “aggressive driver” who, being impatient, takes unnecessary risks in his driving. When I mention these attributes to him, he retorts that he has yet to have an accident after all of these decades. In sum, like many of us, he is over confident in [Read More]
Recently, I conducted a mediation in which defense counsel was very candid with me by advising that she was there only because the court ordered the mediation and her client would just assume take the matter to trial. In this connection, she further advised that her client has been taking [Read More]
What do you see? In a March 13, 2018 post, LiveScience.com contributor Jasmin Malik Chua published an article on the value of optical illusions. Entitled “What This Optical Illusion Reveals About the Human Brain”, Ms. Chua replicates a 19th century optical illusion which can be either a rabbit or a [Read More]
