I have been successfully employing ADR strategies to residential building disputes in Sydney for the last 6 months or so. These are disputes that, if not resolved fairly early on, will end up being tracked into either the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal (CTTT) or the Local Court or District Court.

I know that once a building dispute, excluding very simple ones, is filed in either a court or the tribunal  it can quickly start burning a hole in each party’s pocket as the lawyers engage in the process of preparing evidence to meet the pre-trial case management requirements of the court or tribunal. This usually includes -

* Affidavits from clients and other relevant lay witnesses

* Chronologies

* Expert Evidence

* Other relevant documents

This evidence can easily fill one to two big binder folders.

Before you know it each party’s costs have topped $10,000 and by end of a full blown hearing, following an on site conclave of the experts, total costs can easily exceed $30,000. It often takes more than 12 months or more to bring such disputes to finality. During that time the home owners are not very often not able to get their new home or renovations completed to their satisfaction and the builder’s time, energy and resources are tied up in the litigation when he could otherwise be out there getting more jobs and improving his net profit.

On the other hand, ADR strategies, if applied skillfully and effectively early on with the cooperation and participation of each party, can see the very same dispute totally resolved (or substantially resolved) within 6 - 8 weeks at a total cost to each party of less than $6000.

How is this achieved?

This will be explained in a coming blog post. Stay tuned.

Here is a key point - a change in paradigm and attitude, if adopted by both parties to the dispute, can see disputes that have the potential to expensively and stressfully  tie them up in conflict for months on end resolved quickly, amicably and inexpensively allowing the parties to get “back to normal” in their lives in the shortest possible time.

CHRIS WHITELAW

wwww.chriswhitelaw.com.au