Case study – mediating a massive debt dispute

Disputes can easily get out of hand, especially where money is concerned.

I was asked to mediate for two parties who were in a massive dispute, where each thought that the other owed their respective business a large sum of money.

However, on investigation it transpired that both of them were owed money and that the dispute as represented by both of them, was merely the tip of a much larger problem. I worked with them so that they were able to identify what each thought they were owed, and also what they thought they owed to the other party.

I then adjudicated the claims and was able to show how I believed a court would look at the evidence to hand, well enough to convince both sides that they had a good hearing and hence they both fully supported the decisions that had been made.

This was achieved by reducing the dispute down so that it was much more manageable. There were some tangential aspects to the dispute that we separated out to be resolved independently, so that we could all focus on the central issues, one of which involved a third party and might have led to very costly litigation where the third party would in turn be looking to one of the parties to contribute.

It was a successful mediation, where I enabled the parties to take the emotion out of the matter and then reach a conclusion. Once we were moving towards a resolution of the central matter, both parties became increasingly generous when dealing with the ancillary issues.