FBK Legal News

Izvestiya newspaper revised draft bill on mediation, alternative procedure for dispute settlement involving intermediate party, which State Duma passed in the first seating on May, 14. Intermediation is a special way for pre-trial dispute settlement with participation of a special independent person – mediator.

 “It’s supposed that this procedure has considerable advantages over litigation, since it is much faster and requires less resources, besides it takes place without participation of state”, Alexander Ermolenko, Head of FBK-Legal Corporate Practice commented in his interview to Izvestiya newspaper. According to him, it allows to lessen the load of courts in terms of cases not requiring court interference. However at the same time the expert noted that so far it has not been clear how the mediation procedure is to be implemented in practice: «draft bill submitted to State Duma, in our opinion, does not consider possibilities of misapplication and unconscientious use of mediation procedure by disputing parties (e.g. dragging on litigation, refusal to perform etc.) as well as a number of procedural issues”, Ermolenko concluded.