arbitration

The Power in Partnering
'When you work with someone in a cooperative effort to achieve a common goal,' wrote Curt Straub in a trailblazing article in October 1999, 'the odds are greatly reduced that you will wind up one day facing that person in a courtroom.   'The neat thing about this form of cooperation, also known in business circles as partnering, is that it can do much more than keep you off your lawyer's time clock.  In fact, partnering is something that all of us in the industry can
2019/10.2, October 23 — Organizing Beauty, Assembling Components, Roberto’s World and more
THE ESSENTIAL E-NEWSLETTER FOR WATERSHAPE DESIGNERS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS October 23, 2019 www.watershapes.com FEATURE ARTICLE…
Who Needs Litigation?
Most watershapers and their businesses have been (or at some point will be) exposed to some form of litigation.  We do indeed live in a litigious society, and if you have yet to experience this sad reality at close hand, just wait a while:  It's the nature of the contracting business, and your turn almost certainly will come. Doing battle in a courtroom has often been described as the world's most expensive indoor sport, one about a half step away from hand-to-hand combat.  It's stressful, costly in time and money, incredibly distracting and generally no fun at all.  In my own experience, litigation is the ultimate in misery and frustration:  Even when you win, you walk away feeling like you've been through some kind of meat grinder. In an effort to stave off the costly, time-consuming, unpredictable and generally unsatisfying outcomes that all-too-often arise through the conventional judicial system, many companies have been turning in recent years to Alternative Dispute Resolution.  In fact, this trend has so much momentum and respect that Congress passed the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act and the President signed it into law in October 1998.  This legislation mandates that all federal courts must develop and implement ADR programs. I'm not always in support of things our government does, but in this case, I believe strongly that ADR programs and other mediation strategies can help all of us lift the
Easing Troubled Waters
Just think about what can happen if a customer seeks compensation for some problem that has arisen in the course of installing a watershape:  Whether the complaint is