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Mediation; automatic referral, pilot scheme.

Wednesday 31 March 2004 at 7:34 pm | In News | Post Comment

1st April 2004
Central London Civil Justice Centre will house a scheme which will involve automatically referring selected civil cases to mediation.
Parties could be liable for costs if they still decline to mediate when their reasons to opt out of the scheme do not satisfy a judge.

If one or both of the parties object to mediation they would need to give their reasons. The case will be referred to a District Judge who will decide whether mediation should take place or whether the case should proceed. If one of the parties still declines to mediate, even though their reasons do not satisfy the judge, they risk being liable to costs under existing case law and Civil Procedure Rule 44.5.

If mediation is successful, the court will draw up a copy of the agreement reached, send copies to the parties and retain a copy on file. The agreement will be binding on both parties If mediation is unsuccessful or only partially successful the parties will be free to continue with court proceedings. The court will allocate the case to the fast or multi-track or order parties to complete an allocation questionnaire.