Many civil disputes never reach a courtroom at all, or find a peaceful finale there — one instrument for this is the referral of a case to mediation by the court. The Georgian Law on Mediation regulates this mechanism in Articles 2, 4 and 7: Article 2 explains what court mediation is, Article 4 how a mediator is chosen during court mediation, and Article 7 what the precondition and the moment of the start of mediation are. On this page we explain this chain and show where court proceedings connect to mediation and what happens after it.
What Court Mediation Is (Article 2)
Under sub-paragraph “b” of Article 2, court mediation is mediation carried out after a claim has been filed with the court, in the manner established by the Civil Procedure Code of Georgia, where the court transfers the case to a mediator. This definition contains three important features: the claim is already in court, the transfer is made by the court, and the procedure is determined by procedural legislation — court mediation is thus a continuation of the court process in the same case, with the examination moved to a mediator. The law also distinguishes court mediation from private mediation, which proceeds at the parties’ initiative, without the transfer of the case by a court; the participants in mediation are the mediator, the parties, their representatives and a third party.
Choosing a Mediator in Court Mediation (Article 4)
Article 4 determines the mechanism for selecting the mediator. Mediation may be conducted simultaneously by one or several mediators, and the choice of the mediator is agreed by the parties, except in cases provided for by law. During court mediation the parties choose the mediator from a list of candidates compiled by the court on the basis of the unified registry of mediators and proposed to the parties, taking into account the mediator’s area of activity. The law also allows the Association of Mediators to lay down additional requirements — age, length of service or higher education. If the parties fail to agree on a candidate within 3 days of the list being proposed, the authorised person or body of the Association, on the basis of a request from the court, appoints as mediator the next person registered in the registry within 3 days of receiving that request. This means that disagreement between the parties does not halt the process — the fallback mechanism starts the mediation anyway.