Now while I was fully prepared to go to trial, here is the unfortunate aspect of the case. I was forced to go through some kind mediation in the court system based solely on the dollar amount of the claim. While it would have been better to head straight to a judge and go through all of the facts that we intended to rely on, with this system I was forced to go into mediation and to try to talk it out.
I thought this was ludicrous and didn’t work for my situation at all. As you may recall, I had the defendant’s gameplan document which outlined exactly the story he was going to tell and how he was going to try to make it sound convincing. I was prepared too as a result where the reply and claim which he submitted to the court mirrored that document a lot as well. My fear was that by showing all of my evidence right away it would allow him to twist and modify his story even further since mediation sessions are not documented.
Due to technicalities, to my knowledge I am not allowed to specifically talk about what happened in the mediation. I truly would love to though as I believe this would show you further how ridiculous the process can be. Let’s just say, anything said in there stays in there and can’t be used against anyone regardless of things like if one admitted to doing something or if the story told was completely contradicting. Hence, this gives a person the perfect opportunity to become better at crafting their story. It definitely doesn’t help the side that is trying to end it quickly I’d say.
Do you think mediation is a good idea for a situation like this? So with nothing resolved it was time to start a process where we would be in-front of a judge and now was the time that we had to submit our statement of facts.