MEDIATION CENTRE: Zaki (right) signing the plaque to officiate at the opening of Kuala Lumpur Court Mediation Centre. — Bernama photo
KUALA LUMPUR: Chief Justice Tun Zaki Tun Azmi yesterday declared open the Kuala Lumpur Court Mediation Centre and said court annexed mediation was a free mediation programme using judges as mediators to help the disputing parties in a litigation find a solution.
It was a service provided by the judiciary as an alternative to a trial, which was a win-lose proposition, he said, adding that the Kuala Lumpur Court Mediation Centre was established to run the pilot project.
Zaki said the court annexed mediation programme would be integrated into the court process to ensure that mediation was available to all litigants and it might also be mandated as part of the civil litigation process as it was provided at no cost to the parties and nothing was lost by attempting to mediate a solution.
The judiciary intended to send a strong message to litigants and lawyers that the process was under the umbrella of the courts, he said.
“The centre is set up in the court building. In addition, the mediation process will no longer be conducted in the judges’ chambers but only at the centre.
“This removes the feeling of being pressurised and creates a friendly atmosphere. There will be a panel of appointed mediators who are actually judges (from the High Court and Sessions and Magistrate’s courts), but they will sit as and be called mediators.
“It is hoped that the change from a judge-led mediation style to normal mediation will have more litigants choose mediation compared to litigation.
“As of now, there are 28 civil cases from the High Court referred to this centre and waiting for mediation to take place,” he said.
Zaki also said that statistics showed that the success rate of mediation between January and June this year at all trial courts in Malaysia was 52 per cent and at the Court of Appeal, 15 per cent.
He outlined three advantages of the mediation programme:
— A court-ordered mediation required the parties and their lawyers to commit to the mediation process.
By having to undergo the meditation session under the court authority, parties would have no option but to make good use of the time allocated and try to communicate and break down the barriers between them.
In some cases, reluctant parties became active participants once they were convinced that a win-win solution was workable and that they still maintained their right to proceed to trial if mediation failed.
Even if a case was not settled by mediation, the mediator could at least help the parties to communicate to find a partial solution or agreement to reduce the number of issues that needed to be resolved in court, thus saving time and expense.
— Sometimes, litigants did not offer settlement because they were reluctant to admit that they might have weaknesses in their case. It might be able to convince the uncompromising parties if they heard an assessment of their case directly from a judge who pointed out the case weaknesses and reiterated what their lawyers might have told them initially.
This could help litigants to revise their thinking, reassess the risk of not agreeing and move toward agreement.
— The mediation proceedings were not limited to what was legally relevant.
The parties could discuss wider issues to work out a solution. If mediation was successful, parties could avoid the stress of trial and save cost and time while keeping valuable personal or commercial relationships intact.
Zaki said that for the mediation procedure, all sessions of mediation must be attended by the parties or their representatives who had actual authority to settle the action, along with their solicitors.
He also said that the mediation session was flexible and any settlement reached by the parties became a judgment of the court. — Bernama