Your Custom Text Here
Today more than ever, it is essential for companies to quickly and efficiently resolve any legal dispute or conflict that may affect them. The global COVID-19 pandemic has indeed weakened the Spanish and international business framework, and companies need, more than ever, an impartial system that allows them to:
Protect their rights and interests
Obtain resolutions that bring their disputes with third parties to an end in the short term
Avoid the eternization of judicial proceedings.
Manufacturing employers probably will continue to see an increase in COVID-19-related litigation affecting the industry. Keeping up with recent trends in COVID-19-related litigation can help manufacturers ensure compliance with the common bases of alleged violations.
Read moreIf you want to take a technology dispute to court, you’re unlikely to get a trial date in the Technology and Construction Court in London for over a year if you are going to need a week or more of the court’s time. With Brexit and Covid causing ongoing commercial and financial uncertainty, is there another quicker option to resolve disputes that parties can consider? The short answer is yes.
Introduced in October 2019, the Society for Computers & Law Adjudication Scheme might be just what parties need. Taking its lead from the adjudication provisions used in construction disputes, the Scheme is designed to provide a fast provisionally binding decision in three months. It can be used for all “Technology disputes” which are defined as “any dispute arising from a contract for the provision of tech-related goods and services including software development contracts, outsourcing arrangements, system integration contracts, IT consultancy contracts, software licensing agreements, blockchain/smart contracts and cloud computing contracts”. There is no restriction on the size or scope of the dispute that can be referred other than that it must be capable of being resolved within three months.
Read moreIn my last director’s column, published one year ago this week, I wrote about the importance of relationships. Less than a month later, we were forced to retreat into our homes and away from our colleagues, friends and extended family. How’s that for timing?
One of the more interesting side effects of COVID-19, apart from the loss of taste and smell, is how the pandemic has accelerated trends such as the rise in remote work and the shift toward a life lived increasingly online. COVID has been great for Amazon, Zoom and Netflix. Not so much for concert promoters and commercial real estate owners.
Read moreWe have all followed the high profile test case, brought by the FCA, to clarify how Business Interruption policies should respond to pandemic related claims. The Supreme Court judgment in The Financial Conduct Authority v Arch and Others has provided much needed guidance on the law is this area. Not least, it has overturned the egregious decision in the Orient Express Hotels case which left a hotel policyholder without cover from the impact of Hurricane Katrina. The court had decided in the now discredited case that a policy holder can’t claim for a BI loss if the event which caused it damage also led to wider area damage which would have affected its business even if it had suffered no direct loss!
Read moreThe tsunami of litigation brought on by the pandemic has crystalized the importance of “dispute-resolution” clauses.
In particular two high-profile cases – pandemic-related cases against Airbnb and Amazon — have brought this to light. These clauses can be potent tool for business owners to minimize litigation risk.
In a well-written business contract, parties will set contours that would govern any future dispute between them. In such a dispute-resolution clause, the parties often select a court location, consent to its jurisdiction, and waive the right to a jury trial.
Read moreThe COVID-19 pandemic has brought new challenges to all manner of dispute resolution. Whether it is becoming accustomed to addressing a judge from your bedroom via Zoom, taking instruction from your client on WhatsApp, or trying to guess your opponent’s hobbies from their home office bookshelves, the new world of remote-working has brought new difficulties and forms of workplace and entertainment in equal measure. What has not changed, however, is the demand from parties to resolve their disputes expeditiously and efficiently, including through mediation. This begs the question: how do mediations and practitioners need to adapt in this brave new world? It is likely to be here to stay, so here are five top tips for surviving and getting the most from a virtual mediation.
Read moreMost employers have seen the forecasts. The waves of employees let go in the COVID crisis will file a surge of employment claims. Worse, plaintiffs’ lawyers will scrutinize the many changes required by the pandemic and assert class actions and collective actions in response to practices or policies that are not on rock-solid legal ground.
Read moreIn a recent unreported labour arbitration award, Caressant Care Nursing & Retirement Homes and Christian Labour Association of Canada, the arbitrator, Dana Randall, upheld the decision that the employer’s mandatory COVID-19 testing policy was a reasonable exercise of management rights.
The case concerns an employer, a retirement home located in Woodstock, Ontario, which provides rental accommodation with care and services to residents who can live independently in a residence while receiving support. The home is provincially regulated by the Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority under the Retirement Homes Act, 2010 and employs staff to provide laundry services to residents of an adjacent nursing home.
Read moreAs members of our arbitration team wrote recently, the global pandemic has led parties to consider arbitration as the optimal process to resolve disputes given its key advantages as an effective, customizable and efficient mechanism. The international arbitration community has shown its ability to pivot quickly and adapt relatively seamlessly in changing global circumstances. In a testament to the flexibility of arbitration, arbitral institutions globally have responded with updates and practice guides to clarify and streamline their rules and procedures in order to better suit the reality of disputes in the post-2020 landscape.
Read moreEamon Harrington, dispute resolution partner at Comyn Kelleher Tobin, looks at how Covid-19 and Lockdown 3.0 is having an impact on the court system and on mediations to resolve disputes.
The President of the High Court earlier highlighted the obligation of all stakeholders to ensure that the administration of justice is not brought to a standstill because of Covid-19.
Read moreIt was during late March 2020, soon after the pandemic first made global headlines, that a group of leading mediators and mediation trainers realized on a Zoom call that the ONLY mediation then taking place in the U.S. and around the world was suddenly "online mediation." Further, we also realized that ALL mediation training was also then remarkably taking place online. Further, despite this near complete shift of mediation services and training to the online environment, we also realized that there were barely any standards, guidance or established best practices for online mediation and online mediation training. We decided that we owed it to ourselves and to the global mediation community to explore whether this void can be effectively addressed.
Read moreThe past year has caused each of us to reflect on what is most important in our lives. Family. Friends. Freedom. It has also made us look forward, to life post-pandemic; and this, along with the pressures of lockdown, home-schooling, and everything else 2020 had to chuck at us, has understandably resulted in lots of couples deciding to go their separate ways.
Read moreLaw360 (January 22, 2021, 6:37 PM EST) -- Airbnb has asked a California federal court to compel arbitration in a proposed class action challenging the home-sharing platform's purported failure to properly repay hosts and guests for canceled bookings during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the dispute's claims must be arbitrated under an agreement the parties signed.
Read moreThe coronavirus has demonstrated the shocking fragility of the justice system in a way I expect none of us would have foreseen at the close of 2019. Who would’ve thought that we’d wake up one day to find that months of hearings, conferences and trials, some of which had been scheduled years ago, had been administratively adjourned sine die? Or that there would be applications of critical personal and financial importance to our clients that the courts would refuse to hear because their subject matter was not among those listed in a sweeping procedural order issued sua sponte?
Read moreThe pandemic forced courts to embrace new technologies as social-distancing requirements prevented access to courthouses, and processes from filing paperwork to holding hearings moved online. But March 2020 was not the first time that courts considered technology adoption. For example, many had already started digitizing their processes for resolving civil disputes.
Read moreOne of the few bright spots shining through the coronavirus pandemic for employees is the attention directed to greater job security, particularly for lower-level employees who have suffered the brunt of economic hardship due to COVID-19.
Read moreIn a recent unreported labour arbitration award, Caressant Care Nursing & Retirement Homes and Christian Labour Association of Canada, Arbitrator Dana Randall confirmed that the employer’s mandatory COVID-19 testing policy was a reasonable exercise of management rights.
Read moreIn Christian Labour Association of Canada v. Caressant Care Nursing & Retirement Homes (D. Randall), a union filed a group grievance on behalf of a number of its members working at an Ontario retirement home to challenge the reasonableness of a policy imposing bi-weekly COVID testing on all staff. In a December 9, 2020 decision, the arbitrator dismissed the grievance on the basis that the policy is reasonable when the privacy intrusion is weighed against the objective of preventing the spread of COVID in the retirement home.
Read more