A New Way to Settle Old Disputes: Mediation and Healthcare

Abstract

The President: Well, once again good evening. Tonight we are venturing into the realms of dispute resolution by mediation and our speaker is Tony Allen, a Director of CEDR since 2001. Now, in my ignorance, I thought that CEDR stood for Comite Europeen de Droit Rural, in other words the European Council for Agricultural Law, but I now know that the cognoscenti refer to it as the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution, which is an independent non-profit organisation whose mission is to encourage and develop mediation and other cost-effective dispute resolution and preventive techniques in commercial and public sector disputes. Now, Tony qualified as a solicitor in 1969 and practised primarily in the fields of personal injury and insurance (in which he acted both for claimants and defendants), clinical negligence, childcare, criminal and civil advocacy and general litigation, which I think you will agree with me is not exactly a narrow area. Now Chambers Guide to the Legal Profession of 2001/2002 said this: “He is universally considered to be clearly the best mediator in the UK for clinical negligence and personal injury”, and in previous editions it said “his humorous and affable style” counted for a lot in cases with a high emotional content. So before calling on him to address us on A New Way to Settle Old Disputes I would remind you please to ensure that your mobile telephones are either set to silent or turned off altogether. Tony has agreed to take questions after his talk, so without further ado, Tony, please do go ahead. Mr Allen: Thank you, Mr President. Good evening everyone.