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Alternative Dispute Resolution As a Problem-Solving Device

BY Walter Goldsmith
August 21, 2010

The past decade has featured massive growth in lawsuits, including those involving real estate. Sometimes these lawsuits have been unavoidable, arising from insolvencies or foreclosures. Often, however, they have resulted from disagreements between property owners and tenants or contractors. The time and money spent on these disputes has caused a needless and crippling drain on the resources of the parties.

Practitioners have observed escalating disillusion of clients with litigation as the primary vehicle for dispute resolution. Sources of dissatisfaction have included, among other things, the length, complexity, expense and general rancor involved. This has been especially true during the recent dramatic and continuing downturn in the economy. Nor are such complaints new. More than 80 years ago, for example, Judge Learned Hand expressed similar views:

The price we pay for unrestrained advocacy, the atmosphere of contention over trifles, and the unwillingness to concede what ought to be conceded, and to proceed to things which matter. Courts have fallen out of repute; many of you avoid them whenever you can, and rightly. About trials hang a suspicion of trickery and a sense of result depending upon cajolery or worse. I wish I could say it was all unmerited. After now some dozen years of experience I must say that as a litigant I should dread a lawsuit beyond almost anything else short of sickness and death.

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