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Posts Tagged ‘Victoria VanBuren’

LinkedIn’s Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group is 900 Members Strong and Growing!

August 23rd, 2010 ADR Social Media, Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group, Mediation, Reinsurance Mediation Comments Off on LinkedIn’s Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group is 900 Members Strong and Growing!

As regular readers know, we own and co-manage with Don Philbin, Jr., Karl Bayer, Robert Bear, and Victoria VanBuren  LinkedIn‘s Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group.  The group actively discusses issues pertaining to domestic and international ADR, and features a distinguished and diverse membership of arbitrators, mediators, business people, attorneys, law professors, students, and other persons interested in ADR.  Our members hail not only from the United States, but many other countries as well. 

The group, which was formed in May 2009, is now 900 members strong and is growing by the week.  Many different industries are represented, including the insurance and reinsurance industry.  The group enables members to share information; discuss and debate issues; directly access numerous excellent ADR-related blogs; and network with others in the domestic and international ADR community. 

The group welcomes new members, and encourages (but does not require) active participation.  The only requirement for membership is a bona fide interest in ADR.  The group is not a forum for, and does not permit, advertising or blatant self-promotion, so our members need not be concerned about being subject to sales pitches and the like. 

If you are already a member of LinkedIn, please click here to apply for membership in the group.  If you are not a LinkedIn member, click here, and you will be guided through the process of creating a profile (which does not need to be completed in one step).  Once your profile is started, and you have a user name and password, you can apply for membership in the group (which entails no more than clicking on a button).  Joining LinkedIn is free, as is joining the group. 

We hope you’ll join up!

LinkedIn’s Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group is More than 800 Members Strong and Growing!

June 26th, 2010 ADR Social Media, Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group Comments Off on LinkedIn’s Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group is More than 800 Members Strong and Growing!

As regular readers know, we own and co-manage with Don Philbin, Jr., Karl Bayer, Robert Bear, and Victoria Van Buren  LinkedIn‘s Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group.  The group actively discusses issues pertaining to domestic and international ADR, and features a distinguished and diverse membership of arbitrators, mediators, business people, attorneys, law professors, students, and other persons interested in ADR.  Our members hail from not only the United States, but many other countries as well. 

The group, which was formed in May 2009, is now more than 800 members strong and is growing by the week.  Many different industries are represented, including the insurance and reinsurance industry.  The group enables members to share information; discuss and debate issues; directly access numerous excellent ADR-related blogs; and network with others in the domestic and international ADR community. 

The group welcomes new members, and encourages (but does not require) active participation.  The only requirement for membership is a bona fide interest in ADR.  The group is not a forum for, and does not permit, advertising or blatant self-promotion, so our members need not be concerned about being subject to sales pitches and the like. 

If you are already a member of LinkedIn, please click here to apply for membership in the group.  If you are not a LinkedIn member, click here, and you will be guided through the process of creating a profile (which does not need to be completed in one step).  Once your profile is started, and you have a log-in name and password, you can apply for membership in the group (which entails no more than clicking on a button).  Joining LinkedIn is free, as is joining the group. 

We hope you’ll join up!

Some New and Useful Resources for Arbitration and Mediation Fans Courtesy of Don Philbin and Victoria Pynchon

January 17th, 2010 ADR Social Media, General, Twitter 2 Comments »

Our friends Victoria Pynchon and Don Philbin recently contributed to the ADR blogosphere some excellent, new resources.  First, Victoria has transferred stewardship of her IP ADR Blog  — which focuses on arbitration, mediation and negotiation issues pertinent to intellectual property disputes — to our friend Professor Eric van Ginkel, and started a new blog with a broader scope:  the Commercial ADR Blog.  The blog’s tag line is “Business Solutions to Justice Issues,” and, as its title suggests, it covers the entire spectrum of  issues pertinent to commercial ADR.  You can visit it here, or access it via our blogroll. 

The Commercial ADR Blog reflects the high-quality writing and insightful analysis that we have come to expect from Victoria’s Settle It Now blog, and the IP ADR Blog.  It also has a very pleasing layout and uses pictures very effectively — another characteristic of Victoria’s blogs, especially Settle It Now.  In fact, every time I check out Settle It Now or Commercial ADR, I make a mental note to learn how to use effectively the pictures function in WordPress!   (By the way, another blog that uses pictures effectively is Disputing, Karl Bayer’s and Victoria VanBuren’s excellent blog.)  

Few in the ADR business are as indefatigable as Victoria Pynchon, but our friend, and LinkedIn Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group Co-Manager Don Philbin is in her league.  Don’s latest contribution to the world of ADR is the ADR Highlight Reel, which you can read here or access via the link in our blogroll.  Don avidly follows more than 100 blogs, many or most of which touch on ADR, or ADR-related topics, like brain science.  Don traditionally flagged articles that he thought were particularly interesting and distributed copies of them by snail mail, and later, by e mail.  With the advent of Twitter, Don set up a system that allows him to tag articles, which, along with a brief description, are automatically posted on Twitter via an RSS feed.  The ADR Hightight Reel consolidates in a single blog post the links to all of Don’s recommended ADR articles for a given period. 

Don’s is an incredibly valuable resource.  Many of us spend hours surfing the web or plowing through Google Reader to keep abreast of ADR-related developments.  Don does all of that work for us and makes it available in one highly accessible format.  Even if you already follow Don on Twitter, and receive his recommendations on a real time basis, article by article, having those recommendations in one spot is a real big plus. 

I suppose a skeptic might question whether he or she should rely on a third person to cull through the 100s of articles pertinent to ADR regularly posted in the blogosphere.  But I can assure readers that Don casts a very wide net with a fairly narrow mesh (I apologize — Sometimes I simply cannot resist fishing-related metaphors, even so-so ones like this!).  The chances of Don not featuring a truly relevant ADR article in his ADR Highlight Reel are, in my humble opinion and experience, slim to none.

Let us all extend our heartfelt thanks to Victoria Pynchon and Don Philbin for their wonderful, new contributions to the ADR blogosphere.

Disputing Celebrates its Fourth Birthday!

August 24th, 2009 Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group, General Comments Off on Disputing Celebrates its Fourth Birthday!

Today our good friends Karl Bayer and Victoria VanBuren are celebrating Disputing’s fourth birthday.  You can read about it here.   

Disputing is an excellent ADR blog and, on behalf of the Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum, we congratulate Karl and Victoria on this special day.  Both of them have made an enormously valuable contribution to the ADR blogosphere, and continue to produce a steady stream of timely, interesting, thoughtful, and well-written posts. And they have a very impressive following, as well.

As co-founders of the LinkedIn Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group, they have helped provide an excellent forum to the ADR community for the discussion of issues pertinent to the field.  The group continues to grow, and the discussions keep flowing, even in the dog days of summer!

Karl and Victoria:  Congratulations and keep up the excellent work!

The Texas Supreme Court Says Court – Not Arbitrator — Gets to Decide Lack of Capacity Issue Notwithstanding the Severability Doctrine

July 21st, 2009 Arbitrability, Authority of Arbitrators, Texas Supreme Court Comments Off on The Texas Supreme Court Says Court – Not Arbitrator — Gets to Decide Lack of Capacity Issue Notwithstanding the Severability Doctrine

Karl Bayer’s and Victoria VanBuren’s Texas-based  Disputing blog recently reported on In re Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc., __ S.W.3d __ (Texas 2009) (No. 07-0665), in which the Texas Supreme Court held that whether a contracting party had the capacity to enter into a contract containing an arbitration agreement was for the court to decide, notwithstanding that, under the severability (a/k/a “separability”) doctrine, a challenge to the validity or enforceability of a contract as a whole, including the arbitration agreement, is generally for the arbitrators to decide under a broad arbitration clause.  Ms. VanBuren did an excellent job summarizing the case and explaining its significance in her post, “Texas Supreme Court Holds that the Court, not the Arbitrator Should Decide the Issue of Capacity to Contract,” and we recommend that anyone interested in learning more about the case read her thoughtful and nicely-written post. 

Morgan Stanley illustrates that the severability doctrine —  first espoused by the United States Supreme Court in Prima Paint v. Conklin Mfg. Corp., 388 U.S. 395, 403-04 (1967) and later clarified in Buckeye Check Cashing v. Cardengna, 546 U.S. 440, 449 (2006) — is not without its limits.  Severability is a legal fiction, which Courts apply for the purpose of determining whether arbitrators have the authority to determine certain disputes concerning the enforceability or validity of a contract containing an arbitration clause.  It deems the arbitration clause to be an agreement which stands on its own footing from the contract in which it is contained.  Continue Reading »

Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum and Four Other ADR Blogs Make Diane Levin’s “Top Five Tuesdays” List Of New ADR Blogs

July 19th, 2009 Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group, General, Reinsurance Arbitration, Reinsurance Mediation Comments Off on Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum and Four Other ADR Blogs Make Diane Levin’s “Top Five Tuesdays” List Of New ADR Blogs

Each Tuesday the National Arbitration Forum Blog features a “Top Five Tuesdays” guest-blog submission.  The guest-blogger submits a “Top Five” list on some topic pertinent to ADR. 

On July 14, 2009 the NAF Blog posted a “Top-Five Tuesdays” submission by master-blogger Diane Levin, entitled “5 New ADR Blogs to Add to Your Reading List.”  (Available here.)  Diane is, among other things, the blog master of the excellent and immensely popular ADR blog, Mediation Channel, and “unofficial taxonomist of the ADR blogosphere” at her popular worldwide blog directory,  ADRBlogs.com.   Noting that she “track[s] and catalog[s] bloggers world-wide who write about ADR, negotiation, and conflict resolution,” Diane said:     

It gives me the ability to introduce new and worthy ADR blogs to readers – like the following five blogs. I hope you enjoy them: 

 

  1. Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum provides discussion and insights on reinsurance litigation and arbitration and is published by New York-based boutique commercial and industry arbitration firm Loree & Loree. This blog demonstrates quality writing on newsworthy topics that distinguish the top ADR blog; a recent example is “The AAA Commercial Rules and the Pig in a Poke: Gilbert Street Developers, LLC v. La Quinta Homes, LLC“.
  2. Business Conflict Blog provides perspectives on managing the business disputes that companies around the globe face, a focus reflected in posts such as “Contract Drafting for Dispute Management“, aimed for the transactional lawyer seeking to protect the value of the deal. This blog is written by F. Peter Phillips, a commercial arbitrator and mediator based in New Jersey.
  3. Mediation Matters is published by California lawyer and mediator Steve Mehta, who has translated his experience litigating and mediating complex cases into engaging posts that share his reflections on ADR practice, including this one on his experiences going green to conserve energy at his office.
  4. Cross Collaborate serves as a learning resource for all those involved in shaping or influencing governmental decisions, offering commentary on leading issues and innovative practices. It is published by John Folk-Williams, a practitioner and writer in the field of public policy collaboration and interest-based negotiation. His thoughtfulness as a practitioner is evident in posts like “Power Differences, Consensus Building & Collaborative Networks“.
  5. Disputing: Conversations about Dispute Resolution is a dependable source for news, updates and commentary on the law pertaining to arbitration, with a special focus on Texas demonstrated by posts such as “Texas HB 2256 Makes Possible a New Mediation Procedure for ‘Balance Billing‘”.

We thank Diane for having included us not only in her blog directory, ADRBlogs.com, but also in “5 New ADR Blogs to Add to Your Reading List.”  We also thank Diane for including our friends Karl Bayer, Victoria VanBuren and Holly Hayes at Disputing, and for featuring the other three excellent blogs listed above.   

For the benefit of readers who may not know Diane, she is a mediator, dispute resolution trainer, negotiation coach, writer, and lawyer based in Marblehead, Massachusetts.  She has instructed people from around the world in the art of negotiation and mediation.  Since 1995 she has assisted clients in resolving tort, employment, business, estate, family, and real property disputes, and has served on numerous mediation panels, including the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (a/k/a “the EEOC”).  She has a passion for training and coaching and has taught thousands of people to resolve conflict, negotiate better, or become mediators – from Croatian judges to Fortune 500 executives.

Characterizing herself  — tongue in cheek — as “a geek at heart,” Diane also consults on web design and social media for professionals.  She writes about issues pertinent to ADR at the intersection of law, science and popular culture at Mediation Channel, which is regarded (deservedly so) as one of the world’s top ADR blogs.  She tracks and catalogues ADR blogs around the world at ADRblogs.com, where she has created a community for bloggers writing about alternative dispute resolution.  

Thanks again, Diane!

Guest Post: Hall Street Meets S. Maestri Place: What Standards of Review will the Fifth Circuit Apply to Arbitration Awards Under FAA Section 10(a)(4) after Citigroup?

May 4th, 2009 Awards, Grounds for Vacatur, Guest Posts, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit 5 Comments »

Introduction

I am delighted to be invited to guest-blog today by Philip J. Loree Jr. of the Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum.  I was thrilled that Phil jumped right on it when I suggested that we should guest-post on each others blogs in the near future. 

Phil did an outstanding job discussing the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2009 (read the post here) last week as a guest-blogger at Disputing.  He suggested that I  explore the topic of “manifest disregard of the law,” in light of the United States Supreme Court decision Hall Street Associates, LLC v. Mattel, Inc. 128 S.Ct. 1396 (2008), and the Fifth Circuit ruling in Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. v. Bacon, ___ F.3d ___ (5th Cir. 2009).  So, after conquering some initial, mild trepidation about my first guest-blogging experience, here I am.  Continue Reading »

Guest Blogger Victoria VanBuren Discusses the Role of Federal Arbitration Act Section 10(a)(4) After Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. v. Bacon

May 4th, 2009 Awards, Guest Posts, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit 1 Comment »

Today we are honored and delighted to feature “Hall Street Meets S. Maestri Place: What Standards of Review will the Fifth Circuit Apply to Arbitration Awards Under FAA Section 10(a)(4) after Citigroup?”, a guest-blog post submitted by Victoria VanBuren, the blogmaster of Disputing, an excellent ADR blog.  We look forward to featuring more of her posts in the future. 

Victoria is an up and coming young attorney who works for Dispute Resolution Expert Karl Bayer.  Based in Austin, Texas, Karl’s team focuses on litigation, arbitration, and mediation of intellectual property, environmental, and health care disputes.  (Learn more about Karl Bayer’s practice here and read Victoria’s bio here.)  Victoria, a graduate of the University of Texas School Of Law, is currently pursuing a degree in computer science, and is a member of several ADR and other legal-services-oriented associations.  Victoria has done a wonderful job keeping Disputing loaded with up-to-date cases, legislation, and relevant articles on matters pertinent to arbitration and other forms of dispute resolution.  Her efforts are particularly impressive when you consider that she graduated from law school only a few years ago, is an active networker and business developer, and is pursuing a computer science degree on top of all of that.  Keep your eyes on this rising star! Continue Reading »