What are the best practices with respect to arbitrators utilizing virtual backgrounds for online arbitration proceedings? Should arbitrators avoid using virtual backgrounds? If yes, why?
Please provide your thoughts/comments below.
October 2021 Archives
What would should an arbitrator do if sitting on a tribunal or acting as sole arbitrator and mid-way through the process the parties make their expert disclosures, and it turns out that one of the experts is someone she/he knows and with whom she/he has had a very bad experience involving their veracity?
Please provide your thoughts/comments below.
What is your position regarding the presentation of evidence at a hearing by deposition transcript only (the witness does not appear either in person or by video)?
Please provide your thoughts/comments below.
Rekha Rangachari, Executive Director of NYIAC, runs a weekly Around Town: Upcoming Events in International Arbitrations Message. We at the Section of Dispute Resolution of NYSBA greatly appreciate her thoughtful messages to our ADR community worldwide and run them weekly in this blog. The Section is a proud Founding Organization of NYIAC.
Dear Friends,
We last spoke of selvage. Let's speak today of salve.
Drawn from Middle English vernacular, it's an item to promote healing, usually in the context of ointment to skin to mend wounds -- anchored to ideas of comfort, healing, and promoting well-being. As dusk settles over this invigorating fall evening, we're in that time of year when students set off to university emboldened with aspirations (... thank goodness again in spite of pandemic). For those where higher education means crossing a jurisdictional line (or several), the rescue parachute from homesickness may be the taste of home. What does the food we cook reveal about us? If friends gathered around your dinner table tonight, what flavors are represented -- the salve to reinvigorate after a frenzied week? Is it a particular cuisine and region or a menagerie of global fare? If you could cook anything, unrestrained by your kitchen, pantry, fridge, or culinary abilities, what would it be? Why? Food for thought, indeed!
Having made myself sufficiently hungry envisioning the spices of South India, I'll bid you adieu, with wishes of safety and good health. NYIAC and I remain at your disposal.
Ever yours, Rekha
P.S. As we ensconce ourselves into the academic year, a reminder that the best way to win a Nobel is to get nominated by another laureate. The 2021 phenomenal two pictured here.
"The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are." - Maya Angelou
"It's a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what's changed is you." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
What protocols should arbitrators/mediators now consider for in-person hearings? There is a lot of pressure now in London and Paris for in-person hearings or some hybrid version (e.g., witnesses remotely, counsel and arbitrators in person). The same is true in some parts of the U.S. In some U.S. cities, masks are required to be on during hearings regardless of proof of vaccination and social distancing.
So what precautions for in-person hearings are advisable?
Please provide your thoughts/comments below?
Effective tomorrow October 4, 2021 through July 1, 2022, all in-person participants, including arbitrators, mediators, counsel, parties, paralegals, witnesses, and others, must be fully vaccinated to attend FINRA Dispute Resolution Services arbitration hearings or mediation sessions. Should other ADR providers have the same requirements?
Please provide your thoughts/comments below.
