insurance issues mobilize the adr community in the wake of the gulf coast hurricanes

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VOL. 23 NO. 10 NOVEMBER 2005 ALTERNATIVES 171

ADR BRIEF • ADR BRIEF • ADR BRIEFINSURANCE ISSUES MOBILIZE THE ADR COMMUNITY IN THE WAKE OF THE GULF COAST HURRICANES

The devastation of Hurricanes Katrina andRita have put dispute resolution profession-als on call and into action. Like the after-math of Sept. 11, the storms have not onlytested their skills, but also their relevance.

ADR professionals are joining mass ef-forts underway to rebuild communities,address social issues, and deal with insur-ance claims across the region leveled firstby Katrina in late August, and Rita about amonth later.

While mediators aren’t first responders,ADR practitioners, from insurance com-pany claims adjusters to U.S. Justice De-partment civil rights experts, were right be-hind emergency personnel in administeringhelp to evacuees.

The Federal Emergency ManagementAgency, whose slow response was criticizedstrongly by elected officials in the region,put out a recruiting call for more attorney-mediators to deal with a wide variety ofproblems on Sept. 22. At press time inmid-October, FEMA had closed the appli-cation period after extending it to accom-modate a huge response.

Business lawyers throughout the re-gion—as well as insurance attorneys at bigcarriers worldwide—began taking steps toset up claims facilities. Litigation began im-mediately over whether hurricane policies—with definitions based on decades-old law—covered flood destruction. Insuranceindustry officials blasted plaintiffs’ lawyersfor trying to rewrite contracts. Mississippistate officials sought an injunction barringbig insurers from denying coverage.

Beyond the litigation, aid work, andvolunteerism, the hurricanes’ physical andsocial destruction raised the same profes-sion-related questions and sparked moreself-examination from ADR practitioners,particularly those who studied their ownroles after the 2001 airplane hijacking at-tacks that leveled the World Trade Center.

A facilitated discussion over two daysin late September in Minneapolis, at theannual Association for Conflict Resolution

conference, left many pondering the pro-fession’s role, but also, participants say, mo-bilized a variety of follow-up actions.

Attorneys, both in conflict resolutionand generally, responded swiftly. A Georgiadispute resolution consultant led a series ofSeptember conference calls for informationexchange among attorneys nationwide; par-ticipants reached out to a variety of publicand private agencies with offers of assistance.

New York attorneys invoked Sept. 11on a list serv set up after the 2001 attacks,and offered their thoughts, resources, andvolunteer services.

The American Bar Association Sectionof Dispute Resolution similarly estab-lished a new hurricane-related list serv toaid in the recovery efforts. The section’sKatrina Web page, detailing its efforts,can be found at www.abanet.org/dispute/katrina.html.

The section also appointed an ad hoccommittee that has begun recruitment ef-forts to construct a law school curriculumdealing with the storm-related povertyand racial issues. The curriculum was ex-pected to be ready for presentation at a le-gal educator’s colloquium scheduled forthe section’s annual meeting next spring,with town hall discussions also expectedto accompany the education efforts.

The ABA has set up an informationclearinghouse at www.abanet.org/katrina.The site not only recruits volunteers, but alsoprovides resources for lawyers whose prac-tices have been affected by the hurricanes.

The ABA’s Section of Real Property,Probate, and Trust Law has set up a pagewith information for storm-related prop-erty, probate, trust and tax matters atwww.abanet.org/rppt/katrina/home.html.

Insurers nationally, and state agencyand bar association Web sites from the re-gion also provide lengthy lists of resourcesand programs, including conflict resolu-tion information. The Gulf Coast bar asso-ciations, and ADR practitioners in and outof the legal profession, provided resourcesand are involved in or considering ways toexpand their groups’ involvement in the re-lief and recovery efforts.

* * *

Attorneys in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi,Alabama and Florida, say the loss of prop-erty and records is as bad for the legal sys-tem as the physical destruction of facilities.While arguments about insurance policylanguage grabbed headlines, practitionerssaid that the specter of trying to provedamage claims where the property has van-ished is unimaginable in scope.

“Unless ADR has an active role,” saysformer Mississippi Supreme Court JusticeJames L. Roberts Jr., “the courts are goingto be clogged beyond belief.” Roberts, nowa Pontotoc, Miss., attorney who is chair-man of the Mississippi State Bar Associa-tion alternative dispute resolution section,adds, “The only reasonable way to handlethe situation will be ADR measures.”

For now, legal efforts are more geared to-ward restoring basic systems. Lawyersthroughout the country have offeredmoney, space, and their time to reestablishcourts and law offices. Rebuilding is key,says Melvin A. Rubin, a Miami attorneywho is a member of the ABA Dispute Reso-lution Section’s ad hoc committee and is atthe center of efforts to establish mediationprocesses. “Everybody has to be concernedfrom a selfish standpoint of getting thecommunity back up,” he says, “and that in-cludes commercial business as much as theinsured homeowners—perhaps even more.”

Rubin runs Mediation Services Inc., aMiami and Coral Gables, Fla., ADR con-sulting and provider firm. He has workedclosely with Florida authorities on statemediation centers that over the past yearhandled claims related to four 2004 hur-ricanes that hit the state. Rubin says thathe lost 20%–25% of his clients after1992’s Hurricane Andrew. The “loss of asegment of the commercial world that im-pedes the rebuilding process,” he says,“can’t be repeated.”

Rubin says that “carriers need to gettheir businesses back operating as quicklyas possible, for everyone’s sake.”

William Bailey, managing director of theHurricane Insurance Information Institute,a Flowood, Miss., affiliate of the InsuranceInformation Institute, agrees. “The objective

(continued on next page)

allow consumers to bring lawyers into themediations, while limiting insurers to ad-justers’ representation, and permit con-sumers sole power to repudiate settlementswithin 30 days.

Insurers “always complained to me bit-terly about how the consumers got all thebreaks,” says Bailey, adding quickly, “Andit was successful and it saved them money.. . . [I]t worked so wonderfully.”

Concludes Bailey, a Florida-style media-tion program “should be duplicated andreplicated in the tri-state [Louisiana-Missis-sippi-Alabama] area, especially for thoseclaims emanating in the beach areas, wherea lot of people didn’t have flood insurance.”

* * *

That process already has moved beyondproposals. Judith M. Keegan, director ofthe Alabama Center for Dispute Resolu-tion, a nonprofit organization under theAlabama Supreme Court’s supervision thatassists courts and agencies with ADR de-sign and development, says that her officeis working on a mediation program to dealwith disaster claims.

A task force appointed by AlabamaGov. Bob Riley in the wake of 2004 Hur-ricane Ivan damage recommended media-tion use for such situations in a report re-leased less than a month before Katrina hit.See www.aldoi.org/PDF/Misc/Hurricane-FinalReport2005.pdf.

Keegan, who has spoken with FloridaADR people about that state’s hurricanemediation centers, says she hopes to workwith a university to set up an Alabamaclaims facility. “It will not be new to the in-surers,” she says, “because most of our in-surance companies also insure in Florida.”

Specific plans already are underway,though no formal approvals were in placeat press time. She says that an independentadministrator would be enlisted, and theclaims would have a minimum dollaramount, and have to remain unsettled formore than 90 days from their inception, tobe considered for the facility.

The Alabama task force report focusedon mediation after a broad study of Al-abama’s 200,000 Hurricane Ivan damages

winds and rains tore off their roofs beforethe floods came later, in order to collectunder their property casualty policies.Proof will be difficult, especially if theproperty is wiped out.

So the destructive forces also act onseemingly clear policy exclusions and federallaw defining floods. Mandated contract lan-guage blurs when flood waters’ relationshipsto wind and rain are considered, especiallyin policyholders’ views.

“Regardless of political stripe,” says for-mer Mississippi Supreme Court JusticeRoberts, “there is recognition that proba-bly literally hundreds of thousands of peo-ple are in that situation.” Roberts says hewill propose to his state bar ADR commit-tee, for consideration by the full associa-tion, a claims facility to address the con-flicting policy views.

He says he believes that the bar associ-ation would need to take the lead role inrunning such a facility. “This is not some-thing that would pay a lot of ADRproviders a lot of money,” says Roberts.“It’s practical. The folks that want to makea lot of money out of this as mediatorsneed to find something else to do.”

And on Oct. 4, George Dale, Missis-sippi’s insurance commissioner, announcedthat he was considering a mediation pro-gram to work out the claims between con-sumers and insurance companies.

Storm-related claims facilities charac-terized by mediated processes aren’t new.Florida’s state Department of FinancialServices used mediation for Hurricane An-drew more than a decade ago, and cur-rently runs a program that consisted at itsheight of four mediation centers. The cen-ters dealt with thousands of the state’s 1.7million 2004 storm-related claims, whichthe department estimates caused $21.5 bil-lion in property losses.

A Sept. 4 Orlando Sentinel article notesthat the centers, run by the Collins Centerfor Public Policy, a nonprofit researchgroup that provides ADR services, hadfielded 11,300 requests for help.

The programs generally are slanted to-ward the policyholder, says Bill Bailey, theHurricane Information Institute’s manag-ing director. He explains that the facilities

is to get money into their hands so they canbegin the rest of their lives,” he says.

* * *

That process may have finished before itstarted, at least in some policyholders’ eyes.The problem of homeowners’ insurancethat doesn’t cover flood waters evolved al-most immediately into litigation. Home-owners, fearing minuscule compensationand an inability to prove that wind andrain damage wrecked their houses, ratherthan rising waters, flooded state officeswith complaints.

On Sept. 15, Mississippi Attorney Gen-eral Jim Hood filed a chancery court actionto void property casualty insurance policies,and invalidate provisions, that would beused to exclude Katrina-related coverage.

At press time, the suit had been removedto federal court, where it awaited action.The suit includes a request for a temporaryrestraining order to stop insurers from ask-ing property owners to sign documents stat-ing that their loss was caused by flood or wa-ter, as opposed to wind, and to stop usingwater exclusions to deny or reduce coveragefor hurricane damage or loss.

Risk Management Solutions, a Newark,Calif., consulting firm that quantifies andmanages catastrophic risks for the insuranceindustry, on Sept. 9 estimated private in-sured losses from Hurricane Katrina to be$40 billion to $60 billion, $15 billion to$25 billion of which are related to New Or-leans flooding. The firm estimated totaleconomic losses will exceed $125 billion.

Most U.S. homes and businesses carryproperty casualty insurance with privatecompanies. But fewer have flood insurance,which FEMA provides to homeowners viathe National Flood Insurance Program, cre-ated by Congress in 1968. FEMA and in-surance industry estimates say that less than40% of homeowners in the hurricane zonecarry federal flood insurance—and witheven fewer business policyholders.

This means that homeowners andcommercial establishments will have to de-clare, for example, that the hurricanes’

VOL. 23 NO. 10 NOVEMBER 2005172 ALTERNATIVES

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ADR BRIEF • ADR BRIEF • ADR BRIEF

phisticated affected homeowners and busi-nesses: self-help ADR that eliminates pro-grams and representatives and, hopefully,saves time. “Why don’t you try being ‘themediator’ first?” he suggests. “If you reacha number you’re happy with, then you cankeep the whole damn thing.” Bailey’s in-surance industry-supported organizationprovides resources at www.disasterinforma-tion.org.

Facing criticism from state and local of-ficials in the Gulf Coast region, FEMAmoved to shore up its slow response byadding mediators. The agency circulatedan announcement seeking to fill twoposts—“ADR attorneys” and “conflict res-olution specialists”—that would be in thefederal agency’s “ADR Cadre,” one of 23such cadres it deploys to disasters.

The cadre appointments are for oneyear, but staffers are paid only for activeduty hours they work. The conflict resolu-tion specialists and ADR attorneys will“provide services in internal disputes amongFEMA employees and external disputeswith disaster assistance recipients, contrac-tors, and other government entities.” Thecadre attorneys will provide ADR advice

claims, estimated to be valued at more than$1 billion.

* * *

Mel Rubin, of Miami, who helped developthe Florida centers last year and also was in-volved in the state’s ADR efforts during theHurricane Andrew recovery, says that thereplicable model is one advantage Katrinaand Rita victims have. He says that he does-n’t expect a uniform conflict resolution ap-proach to either property casualty or com-mercial lines claims among the stateinsurance offices currently weighing options.

The biggest difference, besides scale,between the 2004 storms, and the recenthurricanes, is that the current affected areasare inaccessible. Last year, says Rubin, “wehad accessible, logistical sites that we couldmaintain and man for purposes of per-forming the ADR function.” Beyond thecurrent difficulty of locating ADR sites,Rubin says Katrina also is a more compli-cated recovery operation because it dis-persed the area’s population throughoutthe country.

The Florida centers used a roster ofmore than 60 mediators, who must becertified under state law. Rubin says thatthe neutrals received training in readinginsurance contracts, coverage issues, andethical situations that arise in the cases,including those involving FEMA partici-pation. While for ADR system designpurposes, the Florida centers constitute amodel that can be duplicated, the accessi-bility issue shows “each disaster responsewill have to be tailored to the specific in-stance,” says Rubin.

As a result, the disaster-struck states arelooking at online programs, Rubin says,adding that systems designers will need tolook at “more novel approaches, like thepossibilities of adjusters using computerand Webcam tools.”

The mediations, he says, “can really al-most take place anywhere.” He emphasizesthat as bad as the logistics may be, “thebiggest problem is the proving up of thelosses in the wake of tremendous docu-ment destruction.” He also says that medi-ation parties will need to pay attention to

settlement authority issues before they getto the bargaining tables.

Rubin says he has spoken about systemsdesign with insurers’ national “cat” teams—that is, the carrier catastrophe specialiststhat move in immediately after a disaster.“It’s an incredible opportunity for ADR toshow its flexibility and creativity,” he says.“It’s a marvelous opportunity to be innova-tive and push the envelope.”

* * *

In addition to the Florida centers, media-tion and insurance representatives through-out the South also are looking at Califor-nia, where on Sept. 30, Gov. ArnoldSchwarzenegger signed into law a bill mak-ing permanent an earthquake and catastro-phe insurance mediation program—ap-plied in part to claims over wildfiredamages—which had been scheduled tosunset in three years.

“The bottom line,” says the HurricaneInsurance Information Institute’s Bill Bai-ley, is that “the mediation program wouldbe very, very helpful for the claims we’re go-ing to be trying to deal with here.”

Bailey also has another idea for more so-


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at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Car-dozo School of Law in New York, and co-chair of the ABA Dispute Resolution Sec-tion’s ad hoc committee, says that thegroup is absorbing the strong response it isseeing from the section’s main list serv, andthe new disaster-related list serv it set up.

She says that the committee is receivingtwo classes of responses: a wide variety ofADR attorneys offering volunteer assis-tance, ranging from community mediatorsto federal judges, and organizations seek-ing volunteers and assistance, which in-cludes crippled courts.

The committee’s goal, explains Love, isto be a clearinghouse for conflict resolutionvolunteerism.

The committee is moving in other direc-

tions sparked by the response it has received.For example, Love will oversee a subcommit-tee of the ad hoc group that will develop acurriculum on ADR, race, poverty, and dis-aster response. The goal is to present the cur-riculum at the Legal Educators Colloquium,to be held at the ABA section’s annual con-ference next April.

The Dispute Resolution Section expectsto work on the project with the ABA Sec-tion of Individual Rights and Responsibili-ties. Around the time the curriculum is in-troduced, Love and others say that the ABAsections expect to hold town hall-style pub-lic forums to discuss the issues. The ad hoccommittee, says Love, wants a “long-termeffort to see how this field could be mostrelevant in disaster situations.”

* * *

Like the Sept. 11 attacks, the hurricanes areforcing ADR professionals to look inward,

and assess their professional and societalvalue. Maria Volpe, who studied the 9/11aftereffects on the profession (see Maria R.Volpe & Staci Strobl, “Responses to 9/11Reveal Opportunities—and Barriers—forCommercial ADR,” 23 Alternatives 93(June 2005)), says that ADR professional’sdisaster presence and contributions appearto have improved since 2001. But, she says,“the usual questions” still emerge: “What doconflict resolvers have to contribute in re-sponse to catastrophe? What are the chal-lenges or barriers that we have to face? Whatdo we have to do next in order to respond?”

Volpe, who also is a member of the ABADispute Resolution Section’s ad hoc com-mittee and is director of the CUNY DisputeResolution Consortium at John Jay College

in New York, says that the volunteer re-sponse, and extent of the general dialogue,has been high after the hurricanes. She says,however, “It feels like we’re communicatingmore, but there is still that sense of helpless-ness.” Part of the problem, she says, is thatlike after the 2001 attacks, disputes that callfor mediators haven’t ripened yet.

Lela Love describes the introspectionsimilarly. “There is a sort of helplessness inthe conflict resolution community know-ing this service could make things a lot bet-ter,” she says, “but not knowing how toconnect, and find a framework where serv-ices could be provided.”

Love, Volpe and others say that muchof the focus of the disaster response ses-sions at the Association of Conflict Resolu-tion’s late September annual meeting inMinneapolis was on the status and role ofADR professionals. Those talks were ig-nited by Riverdale, Ga., conflict resolutionconsultant S.Y. Bowland’s telephone con-

and consultation; manage an ADR caseload;suggest, design, and perform interventionwork; recommend, prepare, and presenttrainings and workshops; draft ADR settle-ment agreements; and conduct mediationfor interpersonal and complex legal dis-putes, among other duties.

Robert W. Scott, an attorney on theFEMA general counsel’s ADR team who isoverseeing the recruitment efforts, notes inan E-mail that some of the attorneys de-ployed may be sent to continuing Floridaefforts stemming from last year’s four hur-ricanes. He writes that his six-year-oldADR office has authorization to hire 25staffers for FEMA, and may expand up to40. The numbers will be roughly evenlysplit between the ADR attorneys and theconflict resolution specialists.

“There has been a tremendous responsefrom the ADR community” to the Septem-ber call for specialists, writes Scott. “ManyADR/conflict resolution professionals areanxious to apply their skills to help withdisaster response and recovery. We’ve re-ceived applications from almost every stateand even some foreign countries.”

Deployment was targeted to begin latethis month. The application period was sup-posed to last one week, but was extended toOct. 10 to accommodate the applications.Notes Scott as Alternatives went to press inmid-October, “We don’t have an exact countyet. Every application has to be logged in be-fore it can be reviewed and we’re still in thelog-in phase. Our current estimate is that1,000–2,000 applications have been re-ceived for the 25 positions we hope to fill.”

Attorney Nancy Kramer, a veteranNew York City mediator who heads herown practice, says she’s waiting to hear ifher application will be accepted. “Itseemed like a wonderful opportunity todo something constructive” in the wake ofthe disasters, she says, adding, “I think it’sterrific FEMA is looking to the ADRcommunity.”

* * *

There is no shortage of ADR professionalswilling to act. Lela P. Love, a law professor


(continued from previous page)

The disasters spark introspection. ‘There is a sort of helplessness in the conflict resolution community knowing this

service could make things a lot better.’



ference calls, which included people na-tionally, across ADR disciplines.

Bowland says she put out the word thatdialogue was needed via contacts and listservs “when I heard the news announce-ment that they were prepared to shoot tokill,” referring to New Orleans Gov. Kath-leen Blanco’s Sept. 2 deployment of 300National Guard troops. Most of Bowland’scontacts are with community-oriented andpeacemaking conflict resolvers, like thePractitioners Research and Scholarship In-stitute, where she works.

Her goal was to increase volunteerismand dialogue. The result of the conferencecalls—which ran roughly weekly untilmid-October with 10-20 participants, andwhich Bowland expects to continuemonthly—was helping put the disasters’race, class culture, and social justice issues,in the ADR context, in front of the ACRdiscussions and other ADR efforts.

She says that she expected a similar Kat-rina dialogue in late October when sevenpeacemaking and community conflict reso-lution organizations cosponsor a six-hour“pre-conference” at the annual meeting ofthe Victim Offender Mediator Association,in Philadelphia. The organizations make upthe Collaborative Project, which was fundedby the William and Flora Hewlett Founda-tion, a Menlo Park, Calif., foundation.

* * *

Bowland says that there is a strong com-mercial component to the efforts by thepeacemaking, reconciliation, and com-munity mediators. She explains that theissues raised by the poverty uncovered bythe storms gives businesses an opportu-nity for “recognizing how poverty andrace plays into the recognition of a personas user of a product or service. This is awonderful opportunity to understandhow we may have applied a blinder, or atleast a lens, on the way we do business.We can do business better when we lookat these events.”

She says the storms encourage eachADR professional to be a “self-reflectivepractitioner [by] reflecting on ways weconsciously or unconsciously include or

exclude voices in the populations . . . weserve.”

Put another way, says Bowland, “‘ADR101’ requires that you have all the stake-holders at the table. So if the people whoare experienced at the problems aren’t atthe table, then we have clearly failed thatfirst ADR course.”

Moreover, notes Bowland, “a signifi-cant number of people of color, AfricanAmericans, and poor people are likely to beparties to a great number of commercialand business cases, [and] in the alternativethe impact of many commercial and busi-ness conflicts will impact blacks, people ofcolor, and poor people.” Dealing with theKatrina-related matters requires ADRpractitioners “to hone their skills on cul-tural competence,” she says.

* * *

The first neutrals on the scene acting inthose roles likely were from the U.S. JusticeDepartment’s Community Relations Ser-vice. The unit grew out of the Civil RightsAct of 1964; it is dispatched nationwide toscenes of potential conflict involving raceand national origin issues. Its staff, explainsWashington-based deputy director StephenThom, often is sent to help disaster centersand FEMA officials negotiate language andcultural barriers.

Thom explains that 18 staffers were de-ployed in September to Mississippi,Louisiana, and Alabama. He says that theunit established outposts and began recov-ery-centers operations in Mississippi andAlabama, despite problems in finding shel-ter for its own people.

Louisiana, he says, has been anotherstory. Thom says that the service hasmostly only been able to respond to com-plaints about the many racial tensionpoints that have arisen in the relief effortsamong evacuees, FEMA, and other gov-ernment agencies, and private and religiousrelief organizations.

The service was instrumental in help-ing establish a new trailer park recoveryarea—the largest so far with 573 trailers ac-commodating up to 2,000 people—inBaker, La., a suburb of Baton Rouge. See,

e.g., “At FEMA’s First Big Trailer Park,‘Gold’ for One Evacuee,” New York Times,at A16 (Oct. 7, 2005)(detailing local re-sponse to the influx of new residents).“Housing,” says Thom, “is going to be thecenter of all the tension in Louisiana.”

The commercial aspect of the service’sADR and recovery efforts, says Thom,has been dealing with concerns from theNAACP and religious groups that FEMAuse local and minority contractors forservices to be employed. The FEMAequal rights unit has taken the lead onthe issue, Thom says, “but we have sat inon some of those sessions and we havegiven advice.”

Thom, who had returned from a trip toLouisiana when he was interviewed in earlyOctober, reports strong business participa-tion in the FEMA recovery efforts. Still, hesays, government ADR personnel “willhave their hands full” dealing with a vari-ety of issues, beyond his unit’s civil rightsfocus. He singles out potential employ-ment issues as a result of business disrup-tions from the hurricanes.

* * *

The large ADR providers immediately re-sponded to Katrina and Rita.

The American Arbitration Association,based in New York, suspended all pendingcases in New Orleans, Biloxi, Miss., andMobile, Ala., for 30 days, and contactedthe states and private insurance organiza-tions to offer its services in claims disputes.It offered use of its special dispute manage-ment progam, the Disaster RecoveryClaims Resolution Services.

A press release at the nonprofit’s Website, www.adr.org, says that the associationhad contacted “numerous neutralsthroughout the country who have ex-pressed their willingness to offer their serv-ices pro bono, or at a significantly reducedrate,” to Gulf Coast residents.

Minneapolis’s National Arbitration Fo-rum extended a month-long suspension ofmatters for all Katrina victims until mid-October. It also suspended scheduled ADR



sessions for people affected by HurricaneRita until Oct. 24. The firm, which an-nounced it would contribute to relief fundsand match employee and neutrals’ contri-butions, announced that stays would be“liberally granted” to affected parties, whowere urged to monitor its Web site andsend in their new contact information,where applicable.

JAMS, an Irvine, Calif., provider of neu-trals for mostly business matters, announcedthat it has created a $25,000 fund to aid em-ployees of the New Orleans federal courtwho were affected by Katrina. The fund wasestablished by the nonprofit JAMS Founda-tion, which provides financial assistance forconflict resolution initiatives. JAMS pro-vided a statement noting that funds will bedistributed directly to the court clerk’s of-fice, based on applications detailing the em-

ployees’ needs and range of losses.JAMS Dallas panelist Pamela Tynes, a

former U.S. magistrate judge in Louisiana’swestern district, will lead the foundation’sefforts. The JAMS statement notes thatTynes is working with her former federalcourt colleagues to make applicationsavailable to the displaced court employeesand administer the funds.

“We hope these funds will help the fed-eral court system in New Orleans get backon its feet,” notes Steve Price, JAMS Presi-dent and CEO, in the statement. “Wehope that by administering relief directlyto the employees, they will be able to gettheir personal lives back on track and thusreturn to their jobs administering justice inthe court system.”

* * *

Alternatives publisher, the Interna-tional Institute for Conflict Prevention& Resolution, in New York, reached outto property-casualty insurers to offer itsassistance in helping address the largecaseloads, echoing work it did in 1992after Hurricane Andrew. For more in-formation, see CPR News item in lastmonth’s issue at 23 Alternatives 157(October 2005).

* * *

Alternatives Editor Russ Bleemer, whowrote this article, is a member of the ABADispute Resolution Section. �

DOI 10.1002/alt.20102

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The volume—more than 300 pages,with introductions to six topical sectionsfeaturing 43 articles—provides basic skills;

CLE credit can be earned your desk-top, with the on demand audio, video,and text Cognistar interface.

There is one CPR course currentlyoffered, “Arbitration Authority: KeyCases on Enforcement of ArbitrationAgreements & Awards.” It is a one-hourprogram, analyzing recent SupremeCourt, federal and state court decisionson key arbitration issues in the commer-cial, employment, and consumer arenasthat could materially affect your businessor practice.

The course is conducted by CPR Pres-ident Thomas J. Stipanowich, a publisherof this newsletter, and Helena Tavares Er-ickson, CPR senior vice president for re-search, development and education.

Information and registration is availableon CPR’s home page at www.cpradr.org,which offers the courses through www.-cognistar.com. �

DOI 10.1002/alt.20099

(For bulk reprints of this article, please call (201) 748-8789.)

advanced techniques and tricks of the trade;examples of mediation’s application to tradi-tional and unconventional settings; advo-cacy-in-mediation practices; process andsystem design help, and legal developments.

The articles, adapted and updatedfrom the pages of Alternatives—which theCPR Institute has produced for corporatecounsel and law firms since 1983, and co-publishes with Jossey-Bass, a unit of JohnWiley & Sons, Inc.—provide a compre-hensive portrait of the state of currentbusiness mediation use, and project thepractice’s future course.

“Mediation: Approaches and Insights”can be ordered directly from Juris Publish-ing at www.jurispub.com, or by calling(800) 887-4064 or (631) 673-3330. �

CPR’S ONLINE CLE AND TRAINING

CPR has partnered with Cognistar Hold-ings LLC of Westborough, Mass., forhigh-quality electronic Internet courses.

CPR NEWS • CPR NEWS • CPR NEWS • CPR NEWS

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insurance issues mobilize the adr community in the wake of the gulf coast hurricanes

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