Dispute Settlement Counsel

Archive for the ‘Perspectives’ Category

The other day I was in the men’s bathroom.  I couldn’t help but notice that the guy standing next to me was holding up his phone and texting someone.  On another occasion I had seen the same guy in the bathroom holding up and reading a document while standing there.

We often notice things about people and their cell phones, which have now become a body part for many.  Texting under the table during a meeting, texting while driving, texting while at the Red Sox game, checking messages while out to dinner, and my personal favorite -  a man and a women out to dinner and both of them texting and/or talking on their phones and not saying more than a sentence or two to each other.

I wonder if we ask ourselves:  What is so important about the message on the cell that we feel so compelled to answer right now, even when we are doing something else that should be calling for our attention?  I can pretty much guarantee that in more than 90% of these instances that we are on our cells when we’re supposed to be doing something else, whatever it is we are texting or talking about can definitely wait until we finish going to the bathroom, arrive at our destination (or at least until we pull over somewhere), until the meeting has finished, the ball game is over or our dinner date has ended.  The truth is, unless it’s a real health or safety emergency, there is no 24/7 urgency.

If a person spent the lion’s share of the time on his or her cell while out to a meal with me, it would likely be the last meal we’d be sharing.  And I’m not sure I’d feel good about getting billed for my advisor’s time if I knew that he was doing that which he is billing for while going to the bathroom, or at another meeting (which I’m thinking he is also billing someone else for). Read the rest of this entry »

A dispute was swirling around a man and his followers who were promoting an alternative way of living, different from the norms of their time.  The man had just been betrayed by one of his insiders and the dispute was about to come to a head.  As authorities came to arrest him, a physical confrontation between sides broke out, but was quickly diffused by the man’s unconventional intervention between the parties.  Before it could escalate, the man not only stopped the fighting, but reached out and healed someone on the other side.

The confrontations in the Garden of Gethsemane offer a classic modeling of non-adversarial dispute resolution.  While rooted in Christian spirituality, the events have a universal message: It is possible for one to be zealous in holding his position or defending a right, continue to be an advocate for one view and stay the course with respect to pursuing one’s interests and goals, without taking up the fight.  And in the process, one may not only be able to treat those on the other side with respect, but do some healing. Read the rest of this entry »

This is always a time of year that my creative juices get churning and a time that there’s so much going on beneath the surface.  This week is no different.  It’s funny that St. Patrick’s Day almost always occurs during Lent, a convergence of one of the most visible expressions of Irish culture and tradition with one of the core disciplinary practices of Christian spirituality.

Being a little bit Irish and a little more Armenian, it’s also a time when my minority vote trumps the majority vote in my internal ethnic co-existence and eating corned beef and cabbage is allowed as an exception to the traditional meat fast during the forty days of Lent.  My Irish and my Armenian ethos, both deeply aligned with the underdogs in life, celebrate a minority victory.  Both the Irish and the Armenian in me smile; each acknowledging the gift of the other, each eager to share something with the other and both always appreciating the value of a good meal and a good time around the hearth. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s great that there are now two new shows which focus on mediation as an alternative to the court process.  One is Fairly Legal (Thursday at 10 pm EST on USA Network); the other is Harry’s Law (Mondays at 10 pm EST on NBC).

Fairly Legal’s premise is the use of mediation to resolve disputes rather than going to court and fighting through a litigation process.  The lead character, Kate Reed, is a lawyer who walked away from the litigation side of the profession to become a mediator.

Episodes I’ve watched have portrayed employment, intellectual property, divorce and criminal cases resolved by the creative intervention of the mediator.  At the end of the February 24 episode, Kate gave a presentation to a room full of lawyers on the advantages of mediation over court-based litigation, making the case we have been making -  it saves time, saves money, saves relationships, can be more creative in coming up with good solutions and is confidential.

Harry’s Law is a law show with a twist.  The lead lawyer, played by Kathy Bates, runs her law practice out of a shoe store.  This resonates with me because I can envision combining a dispute resolution practice with a breakfast and lunch restaurant – my ultimate goal.

The February 21 episode was on point for two reasons:  It presented two cases, one showing in a compelling way how mediation can be used effectively to resolve a neighborhood gang dispute and the other showing in an equally compelling way how a court-determined verdict fell so short of solving the problem in an employment dispute.

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I’m taking the occasional break from dispute resolution to talk about other things, like restaurants or movies this time, in the spirit of St. Valentine’s Day.

Last time I talked about restaurants, specifically all the great breakfasts places in Gloucester.  This time, being in the midst of all the Academy Award nominations and all, I’ll focus on movies.  There was a powerful contrast this year between a great one, The King’s Speech, that offered up an unlikely lesson in humility and an annoying one, The Social Network, which reminded us of what character flaws like arrogance, inflated egos, absence of loyalty and misplaced senses of entitlement look like.  (Is there any sense of entitlement that is not misplaced?)

Both these movies are nominated for an Oscar. One deserves the award as it took a fairly mundane topic (speech impediments) and made it inspiring.  The other movie should not have been nominated, as it took what should have been a great entrepreneurial story and turned it inside out to show us its uninspiring underbelly.   The Social Network was an average movie that rode the crest of Facebook’s current popularity.  It also portrayed Harvard as a place that breeds arrogance over grace, intelligence but not wisdom, and that absurd sense of entitlement.  I hope for his sake that it’s not an accurate portrayal of the Facebook creator.  If it is, the dude is doomed to the saddest of lives – one without any true friends or a soulmate.  If there is a message to this movie, it is that boatloads of money and fame don’t get you happiness and peace of mind the way a loyal, trusted and close friend or a good woman will.

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Armando Galarraga, Pitcher for the Detroit Tigers

Armando Galarraga will likely never again pitch a perfect game as he did on June 2, 2010.  The law of averages doesn’t favor it, and no one has ever done it.  So in getting what should have been the final called out of a perfect game wrong, umpire Jim Joyce took away something that no amount of money could ever correct.  And even though there was overwhelming support in the sports world for the Commissioner of Baseball to turn a lose-lose situation into a win–win, overturn the ruling on the field and reinstate the perfect game, most of us also recognized that this particular commissioner lacked the courage to make that decision.

So how could this situation, a problem that needed to be solved, get fixed in a way that restored order, justice and peace in the baseball world, when there was no legal mechanism for doing so?  When the law cannot give you the solution the circumstances need, it reverts back to the people involved and spirit of making things right to take the situation into their hands, go outside of the box and turn typical into transformative.

That is exactly how this problem was fixed, by the graciousness by Mr. Galarraga, the act of apology by Mr. Joyce, and an act of collective acceptance and reinstatement by the community, represented the next day by the players and Detroit Tigers fans at the following game.

The next time some macho person suggests that apologies are for wimps, remind them of the more than perfect, perfect game of June 2, 2010.  Tell them that the one and only way that the situation could be corrected was by two grown men choosing to do the opposite of ego, and rise above ineffective position-taking responses of who is right and who is wrong.

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Gloucester Fisherman Memorial

Every once in a while, my blog post is more a slice of life, driven by observations, travels or the events of a certain day.  It’s a break from the usual topic of dispute resolution, although I often find a nexus while writing it.

This post is about Gloucester, MA, America’s oldest seaport.  While beach towns, seaports, or fishing towns like Gloucester or Portland, ME, Portsmouth, NH or Montauk, NY are appealing, that is not why I write this.

I write this because I Love Gloucester, because my goal is to live there, and hopefully be able to practice our brand of dispute resolution there.  This place has been my getaway since I first came as a teenager and spent the day on Good Harbor Beach (GHB) with my friends.  I recognized early on that this place, along with neighboring Rockport and the rest of often overlooked Cape Ann, is a special place.  It is unique, alive, vibrant and like me, walks to a different drum of its own.  Among its several great beaches, two of them – GHB and Wingaersheek – are arguably are among the five most beautiful beaches anywhere in the U.S.

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