The National Arbitration Forum Blog

Two New Jersey opinion letters ran yesterday on NJ.com, each promoting a separate alternative to court litigation.

In her piece Jersey can't sit by while homeowners face foreclosure, Linda Stamato asked: Why Is New Jersey fiddling while its housing stock forecloses? She went on to discuss how to fix the mortgage foreclosure crisis by drawing attention to different initiatives around the nation. She highlighted one Connecticut program whereby each district court in the state is required to establish a foreclosure mediation program.

The program is voluntary and confidential, and homeowners are not required to pay an application fee. Mediation is a process by which a neutral third party (the mediator) assists parties in reaching a fair, voluntary, negotiated agreement. In this case, the homeowner will meet with a mediator and the lender to try to reach an agreement regarding a mortgage foreclosure action.

Linda Stamato is co-director of the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution and a faculty member at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.

In a second unrelated piece, Take insurance savings into account, Doctor Sidney Goldfarb responded to a previous editorial about auto insurance. Dr. Goldfarb discussed various ways to decrease use of auto insurance and to decrease cost of healthcare, noting that “the people who pay for health care might want to start asking about these ideas.” He wrote that healthcare costs are too high in New Jersey, and that 40-50% of health costs are going to insurance companies and to defensive medicine. To “get rid of most of the defensive medicine” he suggests using arbitration instead of malpractice lawsuits.

Arbitration is a rational, efficient, and cost-effective alternative to medical malpractice litigation. Disputes are brought before a neutral third party (the arbitrator) who, after carefully reviewing all of the relevant information, issues a final decision in favor of one of the parties.

Sidney Goldfarb, M.D. is a Urologist in Princeton Borough, New Jersey and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

See Also:

• In Ohio, Mediation Program to Help Struggling Homeowners
• Mediators Propose a Solution to the Mortgage Crisis
• Say Sorry! Doctors Use ADR for Medical Malpractice
• A "Culture of ADR" Can Drive down Healthcare Costs