Creative Solutions

Below are a few examples of creative solutions reached during Joel's mediations.

Personal Injury
Plaintiff tripped while in defendant's casino., where she was a frequent customer. Though liability was in dispute, the real issue was valuation, since the casino wanted to try to reach a settlement that would not alienate this good customer. After probing for creative options, the defendant offer a "free VIP parking pass" as part of the settlement. This proved to be the winning ticket. It provided prestigious VIP parking to plaintiff, which she valued greatly. It offered a positive encouragement for a good customer to continue to frequent the Casino, and at no out of pocket cost to them. A true win-win solution.

Employment
In this court ordered mediation an employee was suing for wrongful termination and discrimination base on gender. The defendant, a large employer of low wage workers did not believe that they had acted improperly, and came to the mediation ready to draw a line in the sand and offer no money to send a message to their workforce that this type of suit would not bear fruit. Plaintiff's attorney was fresh out of law school, on a salary, and aching to go to trial, though she acknowledged in caucus that this was a very weak case. Defendants budget to try this matter was $30,000. The creative solution formulated was to donate $2,000 to a charity of plaintiff's choice. Plaintiff received community recognition she could never have achieved on her own, and defendants saved $28,000, while demonstrating that they would not pay one cent to plaintiffs who brought unfounded claims against them.

Partnership
Plaintiff was suing the family partnership's controller and long time family friend for embezzlement. The plaintiff was indignantly angry and the defendant was emotionally devastated. The amount in dispute was $40,000. Defendant as part of his negotiations to get plaintiff to drop this suit, offered to tear up a stock certificate, signed by plaintiff's deceased mother which entitled defendant to an 80% interest in a $3,000,000 parcel of the partnership's real property, a $2,400,000 value. Plaintiff claimed the certificate was a forgery. Plaintiff's attorney assessed the probability of prevailing on the embezzlement claim at 50% and the probability of prevailing on the forgery issue at 85%. Plaintiff's counsel recommended accepting defendant's settlement proposal. Plaintiff angrily refused. Joel then proposed that plaintiff play a game with him. Joel took out a roll of pennies. He marked 7 pennies black and placed the 50 pennies into a bag. He then placed a $50.00 bill on the conference table. The rules of the game were that if plaintiff selected a plain copper penny, 43 out of the 50, he would get to keep the $50 bill, but if he pulled out a black penny, then he would agree to pay Joel the sum of $6,000. Plaintiff refused to play the game. After showing plaintiff how this related exactly to the mathamatics associated with this litigation, the matter was resolved within an hour.