Through the three-strikes initiative and otherwise, the people have instructed the court system to give criminal matters the highest priority, to insure public safety. With every passing year, our underfunded court system has less and less time, money, and even physical space, for civil matters. If the court system does not dispose of at least as many civil matters as it takes in, the burdens will crush it. As a matter of allocating scarce resources, therefore, the court system rightly does all it can to prevent civil parties from relying on the public fisc to finance a system to resolve their essentially private conflicts. In a private mediation system, however, participants demand, and often get, a somewhat different service.
Private mediators are in business.
So it generally does not behoove private mediators to go overboard on the muscle. It too often backfires. Participants who are hammered into a grudging settlement often later express extreme dissatisfaction with the process, and with the mediator. As the resentment grows, the participants are less and less likely to be sources of repeat business or referrals. And mediation is a business, too.