Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie has is­sued a call to all judges, at­tor­neys and lit­i­gants to work to­geth­er for the in­tro­duc­tion of an ef­fec­tive and per­ma­nent sys­tem of al­ter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion (ADR) as part of the jus­tice sys­tem of T&T.

He made the ap­peal as he for­mal­ly launched an ADR pi­lot project dur­ing a func­tion at the Hall of Jus­tice last week. He al­so re­ferred to pre­vi­ous ADR ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing Ju­di­cial Set­tle­ment Con­fer­ences which he said have yield­ed pos­i­tive re­sults.

Archie said: "Since the in­cep­tion of the Court An­nexed Me­di­a­tion Pi­lot Project in 2011, and hav­ing re­viewed the re­ports on that project with a set­tle­ment rate of 60 per cent, and a cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion rat­ing of 95 per cent, the ques­tion in my mind has been, not whether me­di­a­tion should form part of our ju­di­cial sys­tem, but rather and quite sim­ply, why was it not done a long time ago.

The Chief Jus­tice al­so ob­served that since 2011, there had been an in­crease in the num­ber of Ju­di­cial Set­tle­ment Con­fer­ences be­ing con­duct­ed by ju­di­cial of­fi­cers and at least one Se­nior Coun­sel.

Ex­pand­ing on the ex­per­i­men­ta­tion of the ADR con­cepts, the Chief Jus­tice not­ed that for many in the le­gal pro­fes­sion, they con­sti­tut­ed "a strange new thing" where dis­putants could, in a con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment, re­solve chal­leng­ing com­mer­cial dis­putes which would or­di­nar­i­ly con­sume much of the par­ties and the court's lim­it­ed re­sources; where agree­ments could be fash­ioned out­side the lim­its and pa­ra­me­ters of the par­ties plead­ed case, and where mo­tives and emo­tions were re­solved, dis­si­pat­ing the le­gal bat­tle, and where dis­putants leave the court sat­is­fied that they had ob­tained jus­tice through the ex­er­tion of their own col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts and where peace­ful so­lu­tions could be craft­ed cre­ative­ly with­in he shad­ow of the law.

"A strange new thing in­deed in Ju­di­cial Set­tle­ment Con­fer­ences," the Chief Jus­tice said, "where ju­di­cial of­fi­cers were ac­tu­al­ly help­ing par­ties to set­tle their dis­putes us­ing the lan­guage of col­lab­o­ra­tive con­sen­sus, giv­ing pre­lim­i­nary fore­casts of the like­ly out­come of lit­i­ga­tion."

Hav­ing wit­nessed these forms of ADR, Archie said, there were now many con­verts to them, and it now sets the stage for the for­mal in­te­gra­tion of a mod­el of ADR-tai­lored to meet T&T's needs and con­sis­tent with our lo­cal cul­ture. Al­so wel­com­ing the ini­tia­tives were At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Prakash Ra­mad­har, whose port­fo­lios had rep­re­sen­ta­tion on the com­mit­tee which un­der­took the project.

Oth­er par­tic­i­pants in the prepa­ra­tion for the in­tro­duc­tion of the sys­tem were the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce whose pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer re­spec­tive­ly al­so wit­nessed the launch.

The Chief Jus­tice praised the Law As­so­ci­a­tion for its par­tic­i­pat­ing in the project, for their ma­ture in­put in the court's process­es and se­lec­tion of rois­tered me­di­a­tors and ju­di­cial of­fi­cers as well as for their help­ful sug­ges­tions as the ju­di­cia­ry fi­nalised the prac­tice di­rec­tion for the project.

Dur­ing the year-long run of the pi­lot project, 200 com­mer­cial cas­es are to be re­ferred to me­di­a­tion by the judge at first case man­age­ment con­fer­ences. These cas­es will be cho­sen ran­dom­ly to par­tic­i­pate in the pi­lot project, and the par­ties have the op­tion of agree­ing to their mat­ter be­ing re­ferred to me­di­a­tion by an or­der of the court.

In the case of Ju­di­cial Set­tle­ment Con­fer­enc­ing, 100 cas­es will be re­ferred to me­di­a­tion, 40 per cent of these be­ing cho­sen ran­dom­ly and the re­main­der se­lect­ed by the judge.