Glenn Currier c/o ACR ACR Training Section

Professional Development > ACR Trainers Resource Project > Mediation Case Scenarios > Scenarios: Avoiding Harm

ACR Trainers Resource Project

Mediation Case Scenarios:
Avoiding Harm

Avoiding Harm

Case Scenario 10: Ethics Issue - Confidentiality, Avoiding Harm / Employment
Case Scenario 14: Ethics Issue - Avoiding Harm
Case Scenario 22: Ethics Issue - Confidentiality, Avoiding Harm / Employment

Case Scenario 10

Ethics Issue: Confidentiality, Avoiding Harm
Type of Case Mediated: Employment
Length: 69 words
Author: Corder/Thompson & Associates, www.corderthompson.com

During a caucus in a mediation between two co-workers, Party 1 mentions that Party 2 has made threatening comments suggesting that Party 1 knows where Party 2 lives and where Party 2's children go to school. Party 1 also tells you that Party 2 has said that he can get her fired. Party 1 refuses to bring this up in the joint session but insists that she is frightened.

Case Scenario 14

Ethics Issue: Avoiding Harm
Type of Case Mediated: Not Specified
Length: 39 words
Author: Corder/Thompson & Associates, www.corderthompson.com

During a caucus, one of the parties mentions having been threatened with a knife by someone related to the other party. The threatened party refuses to bring this up in the joint session but insists that he/she is frightened.

Case Scenario 22

Ethics Issue: Confidentiality, Avoiding Harm
Type of Case Mediated: Employment
Length: 232 words
Author: Charles Pou, chipbloc@aol.com

An agency employee who serves as a collateral duty mediator achieves settlement in a case in which a former employee of a truck driver training school alleged that he had been fired by for being too zealous about educational standards. In caucus, the former employee tells the mediator in confidence that the school’s approach to training drivers was lax; in fact, he said, several “students” now on the road received diplomas without even attending a single class after making sizeable tuition payments.

VARIANT 1: The mediator receives a call from the state Department of Transportation’s Inspector General, who asks him/her to tell him all safety-related information that came out in the mediation. He reminds the neutral that there is a public interest in finding out anything that threatens highway safety, as well as in protecting the proper expenditure of federal grant dollars that the school has received.

VARIANT 2: Same scenario, except that the mediator is an employee of DOT, rather than another agency.

VARIANT 3: A similar call comes from a staff member of the House Committee on Highway Safety, who asks the mediator to tell her all safety-related information that came out in the mediation. She reminds the neutral that there is a public interest in finding out anything that threatens highway safety and offers to provide a subpoena for next week’s hearing if the neutral has any discomfort over testifying.