The other day, I was handling a minor commercial dispute.
The situation was a service provider decided to raise a claim against his customer for the balance due for services rendered. The amount was not much.
During mediation, I was doing some reality testing with the parties, and it seemed that a resolution was possible. Suddenly, the Claimant wanted to recover the cost. I pointed out that from the beginning, there was no mention of cost until now. This new demand changed the entire mediation; the Respondent, while is agreeing to pay what is due, is not ready to pay the cost.
The Respondent initially was reluctant to make any payments moved to take responsibility, and agreed to pay the Claimant. The Respondent moved to a state of acceptance.
The Claimant, on the other hand, possibly realised that for all the trouble he had gone through, the amount he would get was relatively meagre and moved into a state of denial. This made it very difficult for me to make the party see things logically even though financially, it would be a loss to the Claimant regarding the actual cost of making trips, preparing for hearing and time loss.
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