Thomas J. Welsh, Chair of the ABA Business Law Section Task Force on ADR in Commercial Finance Transactions, announces the promulgation of the Final Report of the Task Force on ADR in Commercial Financial Transactions. The Report is accompanied by Supplementary Arbitration Rules. Both are available by clicking here.
According to the Preamble on the ABA web page:
Serious problems with litigation in the United States were noted by the College of Trial Lawyers and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System in their Final Report dated April 15, 2009. Arbitration awards are also more readily enforceable across national boundaries than judgments of courts. Also, ethical requirements in many states require that lawyers (including commercial finance lawyers) consider and advise their client on alternative dispute resolution. Given these circumstances, attorneys should consider these techniques and advise their clients. The purpose of the Task Force was to highlight and demonstrate the use of these techniques in a wide variety of commercial finance transactions and provide tools for use by the business lawyer to fashion mechanisms and to advise clients of policy choices that make sense in these transactions and reduce inefficiency and costs of dispute resolution.
The transactions at issue include not only borrower-lender disputes under commercial loans, but also credit swaps, derivatives, and commercial loan intercreditor agreements, participations and syndcations, among other types of transactions.