Advance Dispute Resolution in Summary Court

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2009

The Lexington County Summary Court was selected in March of 2007 by Chief Justice Toal of the South Carolina Supreme Court to participate in the Advanced Dispute Resolution (ADR) Pilot Program. The purpose of the pilot program was to help eliminate the back log of pending civil jury trials through a mandatory court ordered mediation process. Under the ADR program, when a civil jury trial is requested the case is automatically scheduled for mediation. The Summary Court has a jurisdictional limit of $7,500 or less for civil cases. This resulted in more than 10,000 cases being filed in Lexington County Magistrate Court during 2007. The cases were filed in one of six District Magistrate Courts located throughout Lexington County. The Community Mediation Center, a non-profit organization, provided mediation at no cost to Lexington County during the first year of the program. This was possible by way of grant through the South Carolina Bar Association. Lexington County was able to settle 19.3% of cases through Advanced Dispute Resolution within the first six months of the pilot program. After reviewing the first six months statistics, the County made the decision to restructure the program into a Centralized Court model. As a result of this change in structure, almost 25% of cases scheduled during the next six months were settled with mediation.