Settlements In Hand And Out Of Court

Source : TODAY, Wednesday, August 1, 2007

PERHAPS your home renovations have gone wrong, or you have a dispute with your landlord. Or maybe, your employer has breached your employment contract.

How can you resolve this without going to court?

The Law Society hopes a new scheme, to be unveiled today, will provide a quick and
cost-effective way to resolve civil and commercial disputes. Instead of litigation, it is proposing arbitration to expedite the resolution of less complex claims.

The Law Society Arbitration Scheme (LSAS) allows parties to have their disputes decided by an arbitrator. The process will be kept private and the decision legally binding.

Claimants and respondents can also expect greater certainty about time and costs. For example, for tenancy and renovation disputes worth less than $20,000, the society
has set a arbitrator’s fee of $3,000. The rates are fixed depending on the sum in dispute.

Anyone who files for an arbitration claim with the Law Society can also expect to have the dispute heard and an award published in 120 days. “This is probably faster than the completion of trials in court, where proceedings have to follow the rules of court. And it compares favourably to other kinds of arbitration which do not impose tight deadlines,” Mr Chan Leng Sun, chairman of the Law Society’s alternative dispute resolution committee, told TODAY.

The LSAS does away with some formalities and abbreviates the process, for example, in the time given to file statements of claims or to respond. This speed is key to the scheme. “Eliminating certain steps means less work done and cuts out legal fees traditionally incurred,” said Mr Lawrence Teh, who chaired the sub-committee that drafted the rules of the scheme.

It took two years for the Law Society to finalise the scheme, during which time it
considered having different sets of arbitration rules for different types of claims as it looked at schemes such as the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law.

“But we thought different sub-sets might get unwieldy. So, we’ve kept it simple,” said Mr Tay. He anticipates mostly domestic disputes, but transnational claims can also be arbitrated.

The Subordinate Courts have been receptive to the LSAS, as the courts do not encourage parties to prolong disputes. The Law Society had embarked on the scheme as it saw a growing demand for alternative dispute resolutions. In the construction industry, for example, where cash flow is king, an adjudication process was introduced a few years ago to resolve disputes more quickly.

With Singapore aspiring to be an arbitration hub, the Law Society hopes its new scheme will build up legal expertise. Currently, there is a panel of 54 arbitrators, a number it hopes to grow — that the Law Society president can appoint to hear disputes, if parties are unable to agree on their own arbitrator within seven days.

Currently, only experienced lawyers who have written an arbitration award, are fellows of a recognised arbitral institute or have passed a recognised award-writing exam can be on the panel. These lawyers have agreed to help understudies gain expertise. Among those in the panel are former judges L P Thean and G P Selvam, and Senior Counsels K S Rajah, Goh Phai Cheng and Engelin Teh.