Looking for a summer course in dispute resolution? Look no more! the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution will be hosting its 24th Annual Professional Skills Program on June 23-25, 2011 in Malibu, California. Don Philbin, our friend and long time contributor to this blog and Doug Noll will be presenting “Preventing Bad Settlement Decisions and Impasse Using Brain Science, Game Theory, Animated Communication, and Micro-Interventions.” The description promises that “the fact patterns of this course will be familiar to the experienced mediator and trial advocate in negotiation: difficult people, heightened emotions, overly confident case assessments, deeply held beliefs, and barriers to rational deals.” Don is an adjunct professor at the Straus Institute, Chair of the ABA Dispute Resolution Section’s Negotiation Committee, and a member of the ADR Section Council of the State Bar of Texas. This is what Vickie Pynchon has said about Don: And, it’s not inconsequential that Don is one of the nicest guys I know. If you’re going to spend a day or a week or a month with a mediator or an arbitrator, you deserve not only the brightest, most wise and best prepared arbitrator or mediator, you also deserve to have a little fun in the process because . . . you know . . . the money simply isn’t worth the unhappiness that comes when dealing with . . . . the other sort too often. Here is what Harvard lecturer on law David Hoffman says about the course: Don Philbin and Doug Noll are offering one of the most useful negotiation and mediation workshops I have seen in a long time. They begin with a thoughtful exploration of why – from the standpoint of neuroscience and evolutionary biology – our mind is trained to use shortcuts, also known as cognitive biases.. And then – with brilliant examples from such unusual sources as “Deal or No Deal” – they show how these shortcuts can fool us. This is an exceptionally novel, intelligent, and entertaining CLE program. View the brochure here. Register here. Technorati Tags: law, ADR, arbitration

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) recently announced that the number of cybersquatting cases has reached an all time high. According to the report, in 2010, trademark holders filed 2,696 cybersquatting cases relating to some 4,370 domain names with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (WIPO Center) under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). the UDRP has become accepted as an international standard for resolving domain name disputes outside the traditional courts. Read the 2010 WIPO report here.   Technorati Tags: law, ADR, arbitration

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari (No. 10-1213) to Trustmark Ins. Co. v. John Hancock Life Ins. Co., 631 F.3d 869 ( 7th Cir. 2011). The Seventh Circuit had held that an arbitration panel has authority to determine what a confidentiality agreement requires, when the agreement was closely related to an insurance arbitration that was already underway. The questions presented to the U.S. Supreme Court were: May a party be compelled to arbitrate a breach-of-contract claim when the contract contains no arbitration agreement (and indeed, when arbitration would make an arbitrator a judge of his own claimed breach of contract), because a different agreement between nonidentical parties contains an arbitration clause? Is it proper to overturn a preliminary injunction (restraining an arbitrator from sitting in judgment on his own alleged breach of a contract) on the ground that post-arbitration review under the Federal Arbitration Act would prevent irreparable harm? Technorati Tags: law, ADR, arbitration  

As discussed last week, the 112th Congress is now contemplating the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2011. The Senate version was introduced by Sen. Al Franken on May 12, 2011 with 12 co-sponsors. Similarly, Rep. Johnson, Henry C. “Hank,” Jr. introduced the House version with 62 co-sponsors. The Arbitration Fairness Act of 2011 would ban mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses in employment, consumer, and civil rights cases. Senate version: S. 987; Status. House version: H.R. 1873; Status. Stay tuned! Technorati Tags: law, ADR, arbitration