A New Path to Resolving Disputes: Binding Judicial Dispute Resolution

Binding Judicial Dispute Resolution

Recently, I attended an opening of the courts ceremony in London where judges of the Ontario Court of Justice and the Superior Court of Justice were speaking. The local administrative judge for London updated the audience and said that the London family court branch would soon begin piloting an innovative way to move certain cases toward resolution. 

Photo credit: Tyler Lastovich

It’s called binding judicial dispute resolution (Binding JDR). It promises to be a helpful option for the right type of case to help move things along and clear up the backlog. 

So far, what I know is that Binding JDR combines elements of a settlement conference and elements of a trial. The process is pursued in the courts with a judge that hears the settlement conference, and this same judge would be the one who hears the modified trial. 

I wrote about settlement conferences in a previous post.

This project has been tried with success in other regions in Ontario, and I’ll be posting about more details soon. 

Right now it seems that this could be thought of as similar to a mediation-arbitration. This form of alternative dispute resolution is done out of court and allows the parties to craft their own procedures for presenting their evidence, and it allows them to choose their own mediator who would then put on an arbitrator’s hat if there’s no agreement during the mediation segment. I’ll write about mediation and arbitration separately in a future post.

On balance this is great news for Middlesex county divorce litigants because it provides a new option for expediting your matter in court and shows that we have a judiciary that is working hard to find ways to address the growing number of parties seeking relief.

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