Mediating Personal Injury Cases

I attended a CLE (Continuing Legal Education) today on mediating personal injury cases. You might ask “why bother learning about personal injury cases when I want to serve elders and adult families and the disputes that arise around care and planning.”  I think the answer is obvious and multifaceted: first, elders can certainly wind up as parties in personal injury lawsuits. The more I know about the issues that arise in personal injury lawsuits and mediations the more effective I can be as a mediator in personal injury mediations where elders are involved. And second, even if I never mediate a personal injury case involving elders the tools used to resolve these disputes are classic and applicable in many other types of disputes. For example, understanding decision trees, bracketing or risk assessment tools could be helpful in facilitating conversations between family members involved in estate litigation or disputes over selling the family real estate.  Even though personal injury concepts like the serious injury threshold and no-fault insurance issues may never be applicable in family and elder disputes, the skill of creating a space for parties to state what their bottom line is and where there is room for negotiating around that is always useful in any mediation. I ended the day in a CLE about elder abuse, how to identify it without risking further abuse of the victim by the perpetrator, and resources which are available throughout the state.