More than 20,000 civil lawsuits are filed in Santa Clara County each year. Each of those requires court fees of between $180 and $320, and that’s before the fees for lawyers’ services start adding up.
But for many of those cases — from landlord-tenant conflicts to consultant fee disputes — there is a better way: mediation.
“Many people aren’t aware that their communities offer confidential mediation services, a dispute-resolution alternative to the legal system,” said Sharlene Gee, co-chair of the city’s mediation program. For 30 years, Mountain View residents, workers and property owners have had the option of working through a free mediation service — one of the oldest of its kind in the U.S. — that can help them avoid court in most cases.
Just a couple weeks ago, the program helped ease tenant-landlord relations for an Indian grocery store and the property management company at a shopping center on Middlefield Road. Before the city’s mediation program got involved, Daksha Desai and Lance Goulette had never met, though Goulette’s company had owned the building where Desai rented space for her store for five years. Neither tenant nor landlord trusted the other, and there were frequent misunderstandings, both said.
“There was no communication,” Desai said. When Goulette’s company, Mission Peak, proposed a 75-unit condo-apartment development for the site, Desai and her husband, who opened the store in 1998, went to the planning commission and city council meetings to fight it. When the city approved the project, the Desais worried that Goulette would evict them before their lease expired in 2009.
Desai called the city with her concerns, and was referred to the mediation program.
Project Sentinel, a Sunnyvale nonprofit, runs the program for Mountain View, said Martin Eichner, director of dispute resolution programs. A referral from the city, like the one Desai got, is the most common way for people to come into the program.
Once that happens, volunteer mediators are assigned to the case. They set up a meeting with the two parties at a neutral location, like City Hall. The mediators listen to both sides of the story. They frequently summarize the feelings and concerns of both sides during the meeting, to make sure everyone is clearly understood. They separate the opposing people or groups as much as necessary to let the two cool off, or to clarify or get additional information without the other party present.
Usually a written agreement comes out of the session, Eichner said. The volunteers follow up with both sides to make sure they are complying with the agreement.
“Voluntary compliance rates are about 98 percent,” Eichner said. Each year Project Sentinel coordinates about 50 mediations, and “I can’t remember any going to court,” he said.
Volunteers also “conciliate” about 50 cases each year. Those involve mediators talking to each party individually on the phone and acting as a go-between to resolve a dispute.
The Desai-Goulette case, like many, was resolved with one meeting, which lasted about two hours, Eichner said.
Both spoke very highly of the process and the mediators afterwards. “The mediators did a good job of filtering out the negative,” Goulette said. “It created a good forum for parties that had been somewhat antagonistic with each other.”
Desai agreed. “The mediators were very nice people,” she said. “They listen very nicely.”
Desai now understands that Goulette can’t evict her from her building before her lease is up, unless she agrees to a buy-out. And Goulette now has a better understanding of how Desai and her husband feel about their store, which they consider an important resource for the local Indian community. (It features a vegetarian buffet and Indian movie rentals, as well as groceries.) He also understands better what kinds of terms the Desais would want if he decided to try to buy them out of their lease before 2009.
“It gives us a map of how to deal with each other,” Goulette said.
Thanks to success stories like this one, Project Sentinel has the unique problem of being a nonprofit with more volunteers than it needs. “We always have more applicants than [mediator] positions,” Eichner said. “People who know about mediation know it’s a great alternative to litigation or violence, which is how most Americans solve their disputes.”
Despite the extra help, the mediation program is currently taking applications for volunteers. The deadline to apply is April 7. Information can be found at www.mvmediation.com.
