Posted on: Tuesday, March 6, 2001
Cyberspace: Conflict resolution's new frontier
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
You know the advice about avoiding a full-blown temper tantrum: Leave the room and count to 10 before you say a word.
But who says you need to come back to the room after the 10 count, or ever? Conflicts these days can get smoothed over without a single scowl across a conference table, without flesh being pressed at the end.
For certain battles, the Internet has provided a kind of virtual conference table, with the actual combatants sitting many miles away. Giuseppe Leone, a Kailua resident and professional mediator, has worked for Square Trade Inc., helping solve disputes arising over transactions on the auction Web site eBay.
The 200 settlements Leone has brokered in the past six months — arguments over price differentials ranging from a single penny to thousands of dollars — were reached entirely via e-mail exchange.
“All the contact taking place is in writing, and it has some pros and cons,” he said. “The pro is, it forces you to think about what you want to say . . . the con is that many people don’t know how to write.”
Transactions on eBay span the globe, so face-to-face negotiations are impossible. But even when the warring parties live in the same town, Internet-based “talks” can forge the beginnings of an accord, Leone said.
“If it is a complex dispute, the parties do not need to make any decision at the moment,” he said. “This allows you to give the parties homework; they can think in the privacy of their home, where their mind is fresh.”
The final agreement often can be struck more easily in person, Leone added, when opponents already have floated some proposals, or at least defined the battle parameters, online.
Mediator Leone usually sees people land in his office, either in real life or through the Internet, because they feel defrauded. And when the deal is conducted on the Web, as in eBay cases, people already feel nervous and defensive.
His toughest dispute followed an auction in which a commodity was advertised as “free” but under eBay rules had to be sold for at least one cent. It was an argument based on the principle of promises being kept, Leone said.
“An apology resolved the whole thing,” he said. “The underlying feeling is the sense of being powerless: ‘You’ve got my money, and you cheated me.’
“Once they understand that there was no intention of cheating anybody, it gets better.”
Cyber-conferences are already being staged in environments more sophisticated than e-mail documents. At the Internet Mediator (www.internetmediator.com), there are chat rooms where the discussions can take place in real time, either involving all parties or in private sessions between mediator and combatant.
The site is one of several founded by Jim Melamed, a nationally recognized authority in online dispute resolution. Melamed will be among the presenters in “The Best of Mediation and Dispute Resolution in 2001,” a March 16 Honolulu conference sponsored by the Mediation Center of the Pacific.
Worldwide interest in Internet avenues for brokering peace has escalated along with the extraordinary growth in online transactions. This is according to a book due out in May, “Online Dispute Resolution,” by Ethan Katsh and Janet Rifkin, directors of the University of Massachusetts Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution. Web surfers can read an introduction to the book at the site www.disputes.net/cyberweek2001/OnlineDisputeResolutionIntro.htm url site.
The center has just concluded ADR Cyberweek 2001, a free, online exploration of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), but the discussions can still be read after registering at the site (www.umass.edu/cyber).
Locally there’s movement along these avenues as well. A Tokyo-based regional lawyers’ organization called the InterPacific Bar Association is working on a project that would enable international legal disputes to be arbitrated without the need for travel, using the Web and other technological means. The project involves Honolulu attorneys, including Pat Border and Mark Shklov, and although the final plan remains a year or more from completion, they hope Hawai‘i may be chosen as a headquarters for these virtual arbitration sessions.
Technology now allows for the exchange of documents internationally through a secure Web site, Border said, but the only trusted means of conducting a virtual meeting is still closed-circuit television.
Although this saves on travel costs, such videoconferencing set-ups are still expensive. A cheaper alternative — audiovisual signals streamed through the Web — are still prey to interception and thus considered insecure, he said.
However, Shklov added, that limitation of the Web may soon be lifted.
“It’s coming,” he said. “Experts have told us it’s two years away. We first were told five years; now they’re saying two.”
And one Honolulu law firm is developing an online means for averting contract disputes before they even erupt. Bendet, Fidell, Sakai & Lee already has established a password-protected zone on its own Web site (www.bfsl.com) enabling documents to be posted, viewed and revised by the firm’s clients, said attorney Jay Fidell.
An upgrade of the software has been written to make the site accessible by all parties in a negotiation, Fidell added, but so far no clients have volunteered to beta-test that service.
But it seems inevitable that one will, he added. Eighteen months ago, the firm concluded negotiations on a merger using e-mail, although the final documents had to be drawn up and signed in person.
“We had to communicate with probably a dozen people . . . and they were all skiing,” he said. “Everybody was skiing!
“When it was time for us to send a revision, we e-mailed it to everyone on the list,” Fidell added. “We actually closed a deal that way without anyone meeting.
“This is the future of transactional practice,” he added. “In my view, you make smaller the possibility of fraud.”.
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