Waive party opening statements? Never!

Here’s a reason why to not allow parties to waive their opening statements: I did a mediation recently involving a partnership breakup. In pre-mediation, it appeared that the issues would concern a buy-out of the departing partner, as well as a non-compete. But in the mediation, when it was the plaintiff’s turn to give his opening, he said to his former partners across the table, “I need a job.” The partners looked at one another, then said,” We need you back.” The rest of the mediation focused on how to restore the former partner to the partnership. If I had heeded some attorneys’ advice to “skip the opening statement” this might never have happened. I’ll never let parties waive their opening statements!

This entry was written by abfifer, posted on March 1, 2010 at 3:31 pm, filed under Learnings from Mediation. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.