During the Case Management conference in my Nantucket case, the Judge, who presides at a District Court in my County mentioned that he had 5,000 PIP cases pending on his docket.
For those of you not in Massachusetts, PIP (Personal Injury Protection) is the mainstay of the no-fault law in Automobile tort cases. Essentially when a person is injured in an auto accident he must have $2,000 in medical bills (or one other criteria, death, dismemberment, disfigurement or a fracture) to bring a claim for his pain and suffering.
This obviously leads to some problems. Insurers want to cut off treatment before the bills reach that threshold, and injured people want to treat to the point where they have a claim for their pain and suffering.
As a result, a lot of litigation ensues. When a lot of litigation ensues, dockets get clogged.
(I have a background in personal injury law. Directly out of college I worked as a claims adjuster for Liberty Mutual Insurance Company. Two years later I was hired by Data General Corporation (now EMC2)as a Risk Manager. While pursuing my MBA I started my own firm evaluating liability and damages for personal injury lawyers. Once out of law school I worked first for a plaintiff personal injury firm, and shortly thereafter started my own personal injury litigation firm. It wasn’t until the late ’90′s when a colleague from law school who was Corporate Counsel for a large software company persuaded me to collect his company’s outstanding commercial debt.)
Currently I also work as an arbitrator/mediator for a couple of Alternate Dispute Resolution firms: ADR Equimar and Case Closed BDR. I like arbitrating, but the real magic comes in mediation, where if done properly, the parties fashion their own solution. A good mediated result is about as win/win as it gets in the world of litigation.
When the Judge commented on his blocked docket, I immediately thought of the mediation option.
Yesterday, Dave Babik of Case Closed BDR and I sat down and wrote the Judge a proposal to screen his 5,000 PIP cases to see if they would be appropriate for mediation/arbitration. I’m willing to donate one day a month of my time and it will lead to new business for Case Closed. It sounds like a win/win to me.