Center Teaches Mediation Skills to Non-Judges : Law: Ventura County believes that time and money can be saved by helping parties settle civil disputes out of court.

While the courts grow busier and lawsuit costs rise, a handful of experts have been training about 50 Ventura County lawyers, bureaucrats, business people and retirees to become mediators.

The fledgling Ventura Center for Dispute Settlement is teaching the delicate dance of diplomacy to non-judges who could save Ventura County’s courts time and money by helping parties settle civil disputes out of court.

About 20 of the students will use the skills in their jobs, but the other 30 plan to become volunteer mediators for the Center for Dispute Settlement, said Nina Meierding, a private mediator who has been training the students.

Meierding said she and other professional mediators have helped settle cases ranging from simple neighborhood disputes to divorces involving $3 million in property.

Conflicting parties who want to avoid the cost and time of a traditional lawsuit will be able to hire a mediator from the center beginning in January, Meierding said.

Fees for the service will be on a sliding scale of $10 to $50 an hour for individuals and $50 to $99 an hour for businesses.

If the mediator does help the combatants reach an agreement, it is usually put down on paper and becomes a legally binding contract, she said.

In general, filing a lawsuit “is probably the worst way to resolve a dispute,” said Assistant Dist. Atty. Colleen Toy White, who heads the county’s consumer mediation unit.

“It’s time-consuming and it’s very expensive for the public to pay for a system that handles small disputes,” White said.

White said her mediators resolve 90% of their cases, a rate the civilian mediators should be able to match.

On Wednesday, mock-angry shouts punched through the gentle hum of conversation in the Oxnard Hilton Hotel as the center’s students pretended to be furious with each other.

Meierding and the two other instructors, Randy Lowry and Peter Robinson of the Pepperdine University School of Law, had divided them into groups of three --each made up of two “civil litigants” and one “mediator.”

Tamrah Berger, code-enforcement officer for the city of Port Hueneme, acted the part of an enraged musical instrument company supervisor who had fired the company’s groundskeeper and then was forced to explain the firing to a mediator hired by the groundskeeper.

“Insubordination! I’ll spell it out for you: I-N-S-U-B-O-R-D-I-N-A-T-I-O-N!” Berger said, characterizing the employee’s refusal to deliver bank papers when the company’s messenger quit.

“I don’t see why I should be fired for refusing to do something that’s not in my job description,” said “groundskeeper” Karl Lawson, actually the city of Oxnard’s community relations officer.

Playing the mediator, Sheryl Getchman took notes and tried to keep the negotiations from breaking down.

“Well, I’m going to keep it all under ‘insubordination,’ ” said Getchman, a consumer mediator for the county district attorney’s office.

”. . . And loyalty to the company,” Berger snapped.

“Well, how about loyalty to the company and eight years at the job and suddenly being told to do something that’s not in my job description?” Lawson asked.

Then Berger sarcastically mimed playing a violin and Lawson began chuckling, unable to sustain his character’s frown.

Lawson said he is taking the seminar to help improve his skills at settling complaints by Oxnard residents.

Santa Barbara Zoning Supervisor David Dawson said he hopes that the mediation skills he learns in this seminar will help him flesh out the facts in zoning disputes and identify more easily the problems that each party faces.

The center grew out of an experimental program established in 1978 by the U.S. Department of Justice, said Lowry, who is director of the Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine School of Law. Now, about 400 private mediation centers are operating around the country, he said.

But he warned the students that when people disagree, they may decide that the only thing they can agree on is that the mediator is their enemy.

“There are extreme cases where you’re going to be challenged in the first 10 seconds” of mediation, Lowry said. He recalled sitting down with two parties, one of whom pulled back his coat to reveal a gun and a badge and demanded sternly, “Whaddya think you’re gonna do for us?”

“I looked right back at him and said, ‘I’m not sure if I or anyone else can do anything for you,’ ” Lowry said. They argued for five minutes, but then began negotiations and by noon of the next day, “He’s the guy who made the trip to McDonald’s to bring lunch back for us.”