Judges have over the years often had cause to comment on the desirability of finding ways to resolve claims without going to the often unnecessary expense of a full blown trial. Here are a few words of judicial wisdom…
“It appears to me that this was a case in which, at any rate before the trial, a real effort should have been made by way of alternative dispute resolution to see if the matter could be satisfactorily resolved by an experienced mediator, without the parties having to incur the no doubt heavy legal costs of contesting the matter at trial.”
Lord Justice Brooke, Dunnett v Railtrack PLC [2002]
“Compromise is seen as an object worthy of promotion for compromise is better than contest, both for the litigants concerned, for the court and for the administration of justice as a whole. Litigation is time consuming and it comes at a cost, emotional as well as financial. Those are, therefore, appropriate factors to take into account in deciding whether the battle was worth it. Money is not the sole governing criterion.”
Lord Justice Ward, Carver v BAA PLC [2008]
“As everybody who has anything to do with the law well knows, the path of the law is strewn with examples of open and shut cases which, somehow, were not; of unanswerable charges which, in the event, were completely answered; of inexplicable conduct which was fully explained; of fixed and unalterable determinations that, by discussion, suffered a change.”
Mr Justice Megarry, John v Rees [1969] 2 All ER, 274
“Once you are in the hands of professional litigants they take charge of you, willy-nilly, and you find that you have embarked on a course that has no turning back and the incidents of which you cannot even understand. Mediation is not like that. You can always turn back and you have explained to you precisely what is going on. You are in control of what is happening to you.”
Lord Phillips, Lord Chief Justice, Speech in India, 29th March 2008
