Commercial mediations plunge by 28% but CEDR looks to courts for revival

DISPUTES: rise in court-ordered negotiations and fall-out from Dunnett boost reasons to settle

The number of commercial mediations carried out by the market-leading Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution plummeted by 28% last year, the first fall since the full introduction of the Woolf reforms.

CEDR spokesman Dan Wood said the newly released figures reflected drops in mediations carried out by providers across the board, and that it was hoped that the number would now return to a 'steady increase year on year'.

In 1999-2000, the number of CEDR mediations soared by 141% from the previous year, but over the last year the figure stood at 338, down from 467 mediations in 2000-2001.

The figures also show a slight increase in the number of court-ordered mediations - up from 27% of total mediations in 2000-2001 to 31% last year.

Mr Wood said that this - coupled with the recent finding of the Court of Appeal in Dunnett v Railtrack (see [2002] Gazette, 7 March, 5) - signals a new wave of judicial activism which will boost mediation.

In Dunnett, the court denied a costs award to a winning party which refused to consider mediation.

The vast majority of the mediations, 88%, were settled in one day, and the value of the cases remained proportionally unchanged on CEDR's figures for last year, with 265 of cases exceeding 1 million, with the rest having a median value of 150,000.

The majority of the mediations last year were carried out for construction disputes (12%); other popular sectors to mediate were employment, professional negligence, and sale of goods and services disputes - each accounting for 11% of the total cases.

Employment accounted for 4% of the total mediations in the year before, and the increase in the proportion of cases carried out for employment disputes probably reflects the recession, with companies seeking to settle disputes with redundant employees out of court.

Mr Wood said CEDR did not necessarily maintain that the recession was the cause of the dramatic reduction in figures for mediations in general last year, but he added: 'It is assumed by many that during recessions parties are often keener to hang on to their money and hold out, rather than settle.'

Jeremy Fleming