June Arbitration News
from Thomas P. Valenti, P.C.
 
June, 2007- Vol 1, Issue 6
In This Issue
Internet Domain Name Disputes
On Martha's Vineyard
Collaborative Law
More Decisions on Internet Domain Name Disputes

 The National Arbitration Forum recently issued decisions on three separate domain name disputes filed by Disney, Jimmy Buffett and Angels Baseball.

"We continue to see a trend towards filing complaints under the UDRP, rather than lawsuits, for these Internet conflicts," said Kristine Dorrain, Internet Legal Counsel of the National Arbitration Forum. "We're on the way to surpassing last year's record-breaking domain name filings." In 2006, the National Arbitration Forum saw its largest filing year ever, marking a 21% increase over 2005.

The three decisions were made in accordance with the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) by independent and neutral arbitrators on the National Arbitration Forum's panel.

Read about the decisions here.
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Mediation on Martha's Vineyard
The Martha's Vineyard Times recently ran an interesting story by Louisa Williams, executive director of the Martha's Vineyard Mediation Program. To give readers a behind-the-scenes look at mediation - a dispute resolution process that is strictly confidential - Ms. Williams vividly imagines a typical mediation session, involving a roofer, a homeowner, and a mediation panel trying facilitate a resolution.
 
Click here to read the full story.
Colorado Ethics Committee Weighs In on "Collaborative Law"
The four-way agreement that binds opposing parties and their attorneys together in the pursuit for resolution is the crux of a growing ADR practice known as "collaborative law."

It's also what makes the practice per se unethical, according to a recent opinion of the Colorado Bar Association's ethics committee.

If one party withdraws from the collaborative law process, the process ends. And the traditional four-way agreement prohibits the parties' attorneys from representing them in court if the process ends. Therefore, such an agreement places an inherent conflict of interest on the parties' attorneys: they are indirectly responsible to a third party - the opposing party - and are therefore unable to always act in the best interest of their client.

The opinion is stirring debate in the collaborative law community. "It's a nightmare," says Denver's Kathleen Hogan. "The opinion will give Colorado a black eye on the national scene because at the same time our ethics opinion says it is per se unethical, other states have gone the other way."

Legal scholars note that several states had previously questioned the underpinning four-way agreement, although none had yet called it "unethical."
For questions, comments, etc., contact me at 312.832.7720 or by clicking here.
 
Thomas Valenti, P.C.