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Letter from a mediator to a medical malpractice insurer following a mediation that ended in an impasse.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Duke University School of Law is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Law and Contemporary Problems.The trial went very poorly from the beginning. The jury was comprised of about an even split of men/women and black/whites-five jurors did not have a high school education and three slept through goodly portions of the trial. The plaintiff's lawyer was very aggressive .... It was a fiasco from beginning to end. The judge was clearly angry at our failure to settle and talked with us three times during the trial Labout settling]. The jury was out 14 minutes and came back with a $750,000 verdict [in a case that we could have settled for $150,000 two weeks ago].1 I INTRODUCTIONHorror stories about jury results can instill a strong distrust of the litigation system's abilities. While troublesome results such as that noted in the opening quotation may be infrequent, even a few such outcomes would almost certainly impact how the participants approached other cases. The potential for such "jackpot" recoveries awarded by half-awake or halfinterested jurors in malpractice cases has prompted numerous reform proposals including the suggested elimination of the jury in favor of a more qualified decisionmaker.2

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processing specific disputes serving three primary functions.' 8. See FED. R. Civ. P. 1 (rules to be "construed to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action"). Cf Sibbach v. Wilson & Co., 312 U.S. 1. 14 (1941) (describing "procedure" as "the judicial process fir enforcing rights and duties recognized by substantive law and for justly administering remedy and redress foir disregard or infraction of them").