Dispute Settlement Program Described
Jim Waight is a man who realized after a year and a half, that sitting back as a retired man and raising horses on his family’s farm in Hornell was not using the talents he had and that he had honed as a police officer in Maryland near the nation’s capital. To remedy that, he looked into an organization that he felt could utilize those talents and became the program director for the Center for Dispute Settlement (CDS) of Steuben County.
That was six years ago, and Waight is pleased with not just his own role in that organization’s accomplishments bit with those of the unit’s several volunteers who handle its case loads.
At the CIRG August Coffee, Aug. 8, Waight explained that the CDS is part of the Unified Court System of the State of New York. In simple terms, the county’s courts often decide that time, money and the public can be better served if the parties involved in a court action if the issue at hand can be resolved by the contending parties through face-to-face discussion with a trained mediator (i.e. “listener/facilitator) to reach an amicable settlement that is agreeable to the disputing parties and to the court.
CDS mediators are just that, Waight said, “mediators’ and not “arbitrators.” They do not hear the contending parties’ arguments or points of view and then determine how the matter is to be settled. “The idea is to get the two parties together in a non-courtroom atmosphere and have them hear each other’s concerns and mutually come to a settlement that both parties can agree to and that will satisfy the court.
Each issue resolved through mediation is one less matter on the local court docket…one less expense to the county’s taxpayers who bear the cost of trials. It goes without saying that the volunteer mediators come away with a true sense of accomplishment with every settlement that is reached.
The disputes handled by CDS volunteers cover the gamut from parent-child or neighbor-neighbor issues, victim-offender matters, custody and visitation issues, juvenile diversion cases (in which the court truly hopes mediators can find a way to settle issues to avoid a juvenile getting a court record). Persons in need of supervision (PINS) matters are also taken up by CDS mediators.
Given the nature of the matters handled by the group, CDS volunteers don’t just walk in and become mediators. “There is considerable training to equip volunteers to deal with each of the different types of cases they may have to deal with. After the training, the volunteers then sit in as observers on a number of mediations, and then they co-mediate with trained mediators and are rated on their performance. Only after this training and getting favorable ratings are volunteers ready to undertake mediations on their own.
“In simple terms,” Waight said, our mediators just get disputing parties to see the merit of treating others the way they would like to be treated. That’s key to successful mediations, and it does take tact, understanding and a good deal of perception. It’s also very rewarding.” He said he thought it was the kind of community involvement that takes advantages of the interpersonal skills that most retirees have learned and polished during their long years of employment. He wrapped up his presentation by noting that as retirees, we have lived a long time, but our lives are by no means over…we still have things we can do and “gifts” we can offer to our community. Being a CDS mediator needs only people with common sense, he said.
Asked about the local CDS operations and how it functions in our (Steuben County) area, Waight said the local CDS services are expanding. The Steuben County unit is one of 8 county units in the Rochester Judicial District. As such, it works with other agencies in the area and region that can both support and benefit from the CDS and its services.
Q. What is the impact on our court system’s backlog?
A. CDS’ objective is to get cases/issues resolved. There are more than 50,000 small claims cases in Steuben County each year alone. They did over 400 custody-visitation cases last year besides the several issues involving juvenile diversion, PINS and anger management cases.
Q. What are the CDS outcome alternatives?
A. Preferably, they result in agreement that is agreeable to the referring court. That involves an agreement signed by both parties that is binding before the court and the matter then goes back to the court for disposal. Failure to get an agreement results in sending the matter back to the court where the judge (or a jury) decides the outcome. |
