Litigation/International Law

Now in 2010, Coachella Valley Business and Irvine Litigation Lawyer Sebastian Gibson has been practicing business and litigation law in the Coachella Valley since 1984 and has been a business lawyer in California and internationally for over thirty years.

As a Coachella Valley business lawyer who has advised businesses in the desert area for decades, one of the most important tools to resolve business disputes is mediation.  While voluntary mediations, in the opinion of Sebastian Gibson are much more productive than contractual or court arbitrations to the business client, arbitrations still have their use in certain circumstances. 

There are four types of arbitrations available to Coachella Valley Business Lawyers and Irvine litigation attorneys today. None of them compare favorably with mediations, but here are the choices in California, and here’s what you can do to get through one without having your client taken advantage of.

The courts, as most business attorneys in the Coachella Valley know, push the cases toward arbitration, with much less effort directed toward mediation. While some courts have mediation programs set up with volunteer attorneys, as in Indio, the availability of these in other courts such as those near Ontario in Rancho Cucamonga is limited as is the time given by the volunteer attorneys. If your client in the Coachella Valley can afford it, in this writer’s opinion, mediation is a much better way to go than arbitration. That's true throughout the Coachella Valley, in Irvine and throughout California.  But to understand why, you must first understand how arbitration works.

First, there are judicial arbitrations. These are non-binding which means if the arbitrator makes a bad decision, you can reject it by filing a trial de novo and proceed toward trial. The parties select the arbitrator they want. And as soon as either party doesn’t like the award that he or she had little involvement in the thought-making process by the arbitrator, a trial de novo is filed and the case heads toward trial.  However, with the court system jammed up to the gills in Riverside and in Indio as in other jurisdictions, it can be a long time until you even get your case to arbitration.

If the time is taken to choose the arbitrator well, whether you are in Irvine or in the Coachella Valley, this type of arbitration can help to settle a case.  However, because both parties know they can reject the arbitration award and neither party plays a part in the arbitrator’s thought process of how he makes his or her determination, there is a propensity for one side or the other to reject the award. At least in this type of arbitration, a client is not bound by the award of an arbitrator that turns out to be a moron.

A non-judicial arbitration is an arbitration that takes place not in the course of litigation, but rather because a contract or agreement, for instance, requires arbitration. This type of arbitration is almost always binding. One or both parties may not have realized when they signed the agreement that binding arbitration means they accept the possibility if not likelihood that the arbitrator will make a decision that is idiotic and any review of the award will be limited basically to evident miscalculations of math. California law allows very little opportunity to have a bad decision reviewed, modified or corrected.  If you are a Coachella Valley business litigation attorney and you have not warned your client of this fact, watch out for the fireworks when your client learns this. 

If the contract or agreement calling for arbitration of your client's dispute in Ontario also provides that the losing party pays the prevailing party’s attorney fees as well as his or her own, a bad decision by an arbitrator can wind up costing the losing client $100,000 in a medium complex case or more. In this scenario, the attorneys should spend as much time to find a knowledgeable, and evenhanded arbitrator as they do preparing a thorough arbitration brief and preparing the witnesses and the evidence.

A voluntary arbitration can be binding or not. That's true in Irvine and it's true in the Coachella Valley and anywhere in California. The question that should pop into anyone’s head is why have an arbitration when you can have a mediation where the first and foremost goal of both parties and the mediator is to see that the case settles for an amount both parties can accept?

In a mediation, the parties can informally argue the matter out, the mediator can use his or her mediation skills to twist the parties’ arms and none of the parties are stuck with formal evidence rules in their discussions. Witnesses do not have to be brought in and the mediator can look at documents without having to consider as many evidentiary objections. If your client is in the Coachella Valley but the witnesses are in Irvine, that makes a big difference.  Best of all, if the case does not settle, there is no binding award and the parties can either return to have another go, or continue their settlement discussions on their own through their attorneys.

Coachella Valley Business Attorney and Irvine Business Litigation Lawyer R. Sebastian Gibson has been practiced business, international and insurance law in California and England for over 30 years.

California Business Law covers a wide variety of legal matters from contracts to litigation, from real estate to intellectual property such as copyrights, trademarks and patents. Business law in California also includes the formation and representation of corporations as well as providing legal advice for individuals doing any kind of business.

Coachella Valley and Irvine Business Attorney Sebastian Gibson has provided business legal representation throughout Orange County, San Diego, Palm Springs and Palm Desert and all of Southern California. Whether you are a corporation with environmental issues or an individual wanting to protect your legal rights or expand your business into new areas, we can help you.