Chief Justice: Arbitration pilot project in the works

A court-annexed Arbitration pilot project may soon be in the cards for Barbados.

Saying that his Belizean counterpart, Chief Justice Kenneth Benjamin, has taken such a step already, Barbados’ Chief Justice, Sir Marston Gibson, announced that he was considering the same for this island.

The statement came as the CJ continued his push for alternative dispute resolution (ADR), and  particularly, mediation, to become a major part of the island’s judicial system.

Addressing the group of 45 new attorneys admitted to the Bar on Friday during a special sitting of the Supreme Court, he stated that there was a changing face of litigation.

“All of you would have been exposed in Law School to mediation as part of your course of study, and this amply demonstrates that the litigation field has changed. We have launched our court-annexed mediation pilot project in both the High Court and the Magistrates Courts with two practice directions,” he stated.

Sir Marston insisted that such an option would help to reduce the backlog of cases in the court system.

“Resolution of a case filed in either the Supreme Court or Magistrates Court will no longer necessarily entail a judicial decision, but will soon come to mean either a negotiated resolution with the aid of a mediator, or a determination by a mutually agreed decision-maker called an arbitrator.

“The Caribbean as a whole has begun to move in that direction as a way not only of getting rid of the backlog which plagues all of our courts, but of preventing it from recurring once we have seen the back of it. You stand at the threshold of the fight against backlog and delay, and I encourage you to consider this seriously. As I said some time ago, ‘this will require the lawyer to consider what the client needs over what the client wants,’” he stressed. (JMB)

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