ADR
in Federal Court: The View from
Brooklyn
Robert
M. Levy
The Eastern
District of
New York
(EDNY) offers both voluntary mediation and mandatory arbitration with a right
to a trial de novo. The district once provided early neutral evaluation as
well, but discontinued it because of lack of demand. Approximately 10
percent of all civil cases filed in the district are referred to court-annexed
alternative dispute resolution, with a settlement rate of over 50 percent.
An ADR administrator manages each program, working closely with an oversight
judge selected by the district’s chief judge. Because of limited
funding, the program operates without support staff and tries to wring every
last drop of efficiency from technological advances, such as Internet postings,
electronic case filing, and computer-generated notices. Although the
district has a crowded docket, the purpose of ADR is not simply to ease
congestion. Quite to the contrary, its primary goal is to offer litigants
a fair, inexpensive, and efficient means of settling a dispute that they were
unable to solve on their own. This is especially true of mediation,
which offers parties the opportunity to take control of their destiny and
fashion a remedy to fit the case.
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