mediation
While lawsuits and expert witnessing has become an unfortunate cottage industry for the watershaping industry, long-time mediator and watershaper, Curt Straub, urges professionals and their clients to think in terms of “alternative dispute resolution” methods ahead of turning to civil court action. Doing so, he says, saves time, money and frustration.
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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
