Mediation helps make justice affordable

The government has launched a campaign to persuade companies to sign a pledge to consider mediation before taking commercial disputes to court. The timing of the announcement is welcome, following our report that waiting times for both civil and criminal trials in the Court of First Instance rose 50 per cent beyond the judiciary's targets last year because of a shortage of judges to hear a rising caseload.

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Chan Bing-woon, chairperson for Hong Kong Mediation Council. The government has recently launched a campaign to persuade companies to sign a pledge to consider mediation before taking commercial disputes to court. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 12:00am, 26 Jul 2013Updated: 2:35am, 26 Jul 2013

The government has launched a campaign to persuade companies to sign a pledge to consider mediation before taking commercial disputes to court. The timing of the announcement is welcome, following our report that waiting times for both civil and criminal trials in the Court of First Instance rose 50 per cent beyond the judiciary's targets last year because of a shortage of judges to hear a rising caseload.

More than 140 companies have been invited to sign on to a register on the government's website, where they can cross-check to see if the other party to a dispute is also willing to try mediation. Though small, the list is another way of promoting an alternative method of resolving disputes, before companies start costly and time-consuming legal proceedings.

Reforms were introduced four years ago to help reduce the time and cost of resolving civil disputes in the High Court and District Court, either through mediation or by streamlining litigation. They took case management out of the hands of the parties and their lawyers and put it in the hands of judges. In practical terms, this means that if mediation is not adopted, cases should run without the excesses of procedural applications and arguments over peripheral issues that cause delays and add to costs.

Mediation applies to commercial and family disputes. When disputing parties choose to, they negotiate in the presence of a neutral third party. They can also choose arbitration, where they refer the dispute to a person or persons whose decision they agree to accept. Sadly Hongkongers have not taken to mediation as readily as societies with a longer history of it, partly because of familiarity with reliance on the court system.

Nonetheless, given the short history of the reforms, lawyers who support mediation are not unhappy with its 50 per cent success rate in resolving disputes and preventing them from going to court. It is winning increasing acceptance from companies in disputes over relatively small amounts - perhaps a few million dollars, usually when bills for preparatory legal work pile up before they even get to court.

We trust the judiciary succeeds with attempts to recruit more judges as it falls back on deputy judges appointed as an interim measure. Meanwhile, mediation remains a better way of resolving disputes where parties accept it. And judges bear responsibility for managing civil cases to ensure the reforms, including mediation, help increase access to affordable justice.