The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that an arbitrator did not exceed his authority when he analyzed whether a contract was formed because the parties substantially participated in arbitral proceedings without contesting the issue.

Texas’s Fourth District Court of Appeals in San Antonio has ruled that a firefighter was collaterally estopped from challenging arbitration in a dispute over his medical benefits.

Recognizing the importance that adapting the process so that the marketplace continues to appreciate and use it, there are a number of trends that will impact the future of mediation in the court system:

In Part Eleven, we urged that the more regular the process is of retaining special masters, the most likely it is to achieve its function of holding down costs by heading off disputes. We suggested that we should change our historic practice by making the possible use of special masters more the rule than the exception. So what does that mean?