Solutions to complex problems are created through inquiry, analysis, imagination, and the determination to achieve a just result. Fairness and finality define success. Integrity, impartiality, compassion, and intellectual rigor produce just results. These principles guided my 41 years as a trial lawyer and a Connecticut Superior Court judge.
Successful dispute resolution, whether adjudication or mediation, requires understanding, expert analysis, and creative imagination. Understanding begins with compassionate listening, experience, expertise, humility, and preparation. Empathetic listening, with the heart and the head, and civil discussion aid understanding. Expert analysis superimposes legal logic on often disputed factual premises. Compassion, experience, curiosity, humility, and impartiality aid analysis. Listening, anticipating, forecasting, and fashioning solutions meeting the parties’ needs invokes creative imagination. Tenacity, perseverance, and commitment to fairness and justice are required qualities of an effective mediator/arbitrator. All this and more I learned during my career as a civil trial lawyer and a trial court judge. Principled conduct inspired fair & just resolutions during our 1600+ mediation sessions.
Mediation is a non-binding discussion of the case merits, practical considerations including trial time and expense, similarly situated jury verdict valuations, and a search for common ground satisfying the parties’ needs. Mediation’s popularity is tied to control. The participants determine the process, the scope of discussions, help invent the solutions, and control whether they accept the proposed outcome.
My mediation process uniquely engages and involves participants. I involve counsel, the litigants and/or their authorized decision maker(s), in an interactive “roundtable” discussion of the case followed by private discussions. During this portion of the session, the counsel and litigants speak with each other and the mediator.
Mediation succeeds through persuasive education of decision-makers about the risks, benefits, and alternatives to settlement. Mediation participants desire to be heard, understood, and help negotiate settlement terms. Counsels’ documentary submission, before the mediation session, and presentation to the participating decision-makers and mediator during the plenary session, begin the participants’ appreciation of pivotal facts, legal principles, and practical considerations guiding the risk analysis.
The mediator, prepared by counsels’ submissions and decision-makers expressed interests, engages participants in private discussions examining and analyzing the merits and solutions to the controversy. Crafting a solution always requires thoughtful negotiation and creativity.
An efficient, economic, effective, and just determination of the rights and liabilities of the parties in a hospitable atmosphere where civility and respect combine with a search for truth and a fair result. The parties’ agreement authorizes an arbitrator(s) to decide a dispute. The agreement may be an industry form or a unique contract. The agreement defines the dispute, the issue to be decided, and the form of the proceeding including the procedures and substantive law or rules applicable and the arbitrator(s)’ powers, duties, and responsibilities.
Advantages include: selection of an arbitrator expert in the field or discipline involved, private proceedings scheduled at mutually convenient times, dates, and places, case appropriate procedural rules and substantive laws or regulations, and timely and binding awards or arbitral decisions.
Parties empower the neutral to evaluate, appraise, and determine disputed issues based on an abbreviated presentation of evidence and advocacy. The neutral’s determination may be advisory or binding as the parties agree. The evidence may be documentary – admissible in court or not, oral – under oath or not, and/or demonstrative or real evidence – admissible or not – as the parties agree. Non-party witnesses may participate. Counsel may advocate via written submissions and/or orally during the abbreviated proceeding.
Neutral case evaluations familiarly occur during judicial pretrial conferences. Those conferences are time constrained, the evaluator is not chosen by the parties, documentary submissions and party/witness participation are limited, authorized decision makers are often not present, and, as the pretrial conference agenda is broader than case evaluation, counsels’ preparation and attention are diverted from the evaluation.
As a former Connecticut Superior Court judge of the Complex Civil Litigation docket managing cases from filing to conclusion, including aviation, commercial business entities, contract, construction, foreclosure, insurance coverage, commercial leasing, municipal law and liability, negligence and tort cases, professional liability and malpractice, products liability and mass tort medical device litigation (transvaginal mesh), and Probate and estate disputes, I can assist counsel in creating, supervising, and enforcing discovery agreements and preparing the case for a just disposition in negotiation, mediation, arbitration, or at trial.
Binding and non-binding mini-jury trials superintended and court trial-like proceedings offered.
Pre-litigation investigations performed for private sector entities, including internal document discovery and interviews.
Successful negotiation and presentation requires compelling communication. An effective advocate creates a resonating theme, a factually accurate presentation reprising the theme, and prompts action by the listener. Successful negotiation is a multifaceted process requiring honesty, imagination, calculation, and extensive preparation.
Persuasion, whether in informal negotiation or a formal presentation for mediation, arbitration, trial or administrative hearing, is both art and science. Demystifying the art and emphasizing the science gives counsel more control and promotes effective and efficient preparation. Better settlements, better verdicts and judgments, and more efficient preparation translate to happier clients and more satisfied counsel.
Legal experience: aviation, business dissolutions, commercial and construction disputes, injury and death cases, insurance coverage issues, medical device litigation, premises security, products liability, professional liability, probate and estate litigation, real estate and commercial lease, tort litigation, and vehicular design, construction, and collision cases. As a lawyer, I tried several hundred cases to conclusion. As a judge I’ve presided over several hundred more trials.
Judicial: 2008 – 2018 with four court terms on the Complex Civil Litigation docket.
Practice: 1977 – 2008, Delaney & Zemetis, P.C., and affiliated and successor firms. Trial practice in state and federal courts and administrative agencies.
Education: University of CT, cum laude, 1974, Albany Law School, 1977.
Bar: State of Connecticut 1977, United States Federal District Court, Connecticut, 1977.
I am a private pilot, instrument rated, and own and fly a Beech Bonanza. I willingly travel to mediate or arbitrate cases, especially when my piloting is involved.
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Hon. Terence A. Zemetis (Ret.)
Terence A. Zemetis, P.C.
Madison, CT
