Choose A Better Way To Resolve Matters Through Expert Mediator Brisbane
Posted by Alex Cooper on December 2nd, 2015
We all experienceups and downs in our lives and occasionally they bring us into dispute with those who we love, those we formerly loved, our neighbours or those were in business with. Sometimes those disputes end up in court.
Whether it is a family, property or business dispute, when things go wrong the smarter way to deal with it is to go to mediation instead of court.
A Brisbane Mediation can happen within days or weeks, whereas getting a hearing in court can take years, literally. The outcome that you get from a Mediator is one that you can have some control over, and to a large extent the parties can hedge their bets, so to speak, whereas in court the outcome is determined by a judge and it is often all or nothing.
Mediation Brisbane is a confidential process for all parties where they get an opportunity to settle or resolve disputes with the assistance ofan impartial mediator. The mediator plays a crucial role in ensuring that both parties get to express themselves, to be heard and to have the opportunity to reach an agreement to their mutual benefit. While an agreement reached at mediation is confidential, the outcome in court proceedings can be the subject of a searchable public record and might even appear in the media.
Each year hundreds of thousands of claims are commenced in the various court but only a very small percentage of those will actually proceed to trial because during the very lengthy court processes the litigants realise how much it is costing them; they realise the risks they face of a bad judgment; they realise their evidence doesn’t stack up even they believe they are in the right. There are many reasons why cases don’t go to trial. There is also the fact that mediation is now a compulsory step in most courts. If you can’t avoid it, why not take advantage of it and mediate earlier, at a point in time when you have not spent so much money and the parties have not become so entrenched in their positions.
Statistically between 75% and 90% of all mediations result in settlements. In most of those cases the parties will neverget everything they want, it is often about compromise in one way or another, but the will avoid the risk of losing everything and they will avoid the risk of winning the battle but losing the war so to speak, where they eventually secure the win but have spent so much on legal costs that in reality it is a loss. There is also the risk the a party might win the case and even get an order to recover some or most of their legal costs, but what if the other party has no assets, or has shifted their assets and put them beyond your reach?
With a claim in the courts, the parties are limited to asking for the legally available remedies, they are usually quite restrictive. Think about a defamation claim for example; the plaintiff might ask the court for damages and for an injunction but part of what they really want is an apology; the court cannot order a defendant to apologise. In a mediation, the plaintiff could ask for that apology, in fact could ask for anything at all that they felt was a reasonable outcome.
It is the same with business disputes. Legal remedies are often designed to bring about an end to business relationships, to compensate one party with the effect that it ruins the one found to have been in the wrong. At a mediation, the parties can work toward an ongoing and even an improved relationship if that is in their mutual interests.
A Brisbane mediator can assist you to bring an end to disputes without the cost of litigation and sometimes without the loss of family or business relationships.
