A case study on the outcomes of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in the regional trial court of Iloilo City: Its implication on the speedy resolution of court cases

Abstract

"Justice delayed is Justice denied."— William Ewart Gladstone Republic Act No. 9285 or the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act of 2004 enacted by the Philippine Congress is the declared policy of the State to actively promote party autonomy in the resolution of disputes or the freedom of the parties to make their own arrangements to resolve their disputes. Towards this end, the State shall encourage and actively promote the use of ADR as an important means to achieve speedy and impartial justice and declog court dockets. To achieve this, the State shall provide means for the use of ADR as an effective tool and alternative procedure for the resolution of appropriate cases. The purpose of this study was to present the current status on the rate of cases referred to for Mediation as one of the modes in Alternative Dispute Resolution filed in the Office of Philippine Mediation Center Iloilo Unit from 2010 - 2014. This will further lay down the provisions and salient features of RA 9285 (ADR Act of 2004), its initiatives and rationale as well as the Revised Guidelines to implement the expanded coverage of Court Annexed Mediation(CAM) and Judicial Dispute Resolution (JDR). Using information provided in Books, Philippine Laws, on-line resources and numerous articles, the data gathered were analyzed in order to present the current status of the cases referred to for mediation at the Philippine Mediation Center Iloilo Unit. In this study, the percentage in Back to Court cases was presented as well as the Total Number of Cases referred for Mediation and the percentage in Mediated cases based on the materials provided by the Philippine Mediation Center Iloilo Unit. It can be inferred from the data that cases referred to for mediation is high. This is probably due to the initiatives of the Judicial System to extend their services to a large group of people in their service area, reduce the rate of court battles and to declog our courts. This study was conducted to find out the rate of cases referred to Philippine Mediation Office Iloilo Unit per year and to determine the rate of cases that were sent back to court and the rate of cases that were successfully mediated and those that failed to undergo mediation.