What’s Flint Got To Do With It?

An Ah Ha Moment...

?I was honored to be invited (due to the recommendation of Judge Bernice Donald of the 6th?Circuit Court of Appeals) to a United Nations Judicial Consultation on the Environment co- chaired by environmental super stars Professor Erin Daly?and James May.?On April 22, 2022, what I thought would be a pleasant intellectual exercise blossomed into what Arsenio Hall would call an” Ah Ha Moment.”

As lawyers we are accustomed to seeing disputes as a and b conversations. We are trained to see these matters as party controversies.?In court that is what they are based on both custom and rule.?

However, I was reminded in our conversation about a rights-based approach to environmental issues, that what is captioned as a case between parties may well be a concern to a broader community. Importantly the solution to the situation which birthed the dispute may very well involve addressing the interests and soliciting the support from stakeholders who are unnamed in the case caption.

In preparation for the consultation, I read the inciteful compendium on environmental issues authored by Daly and May I read it I was reminded of Flint, a city like many in my beloved Midwest, that has headlined nationally because of its water disaster.

I was called to remember the civil case that landed on my desk, where citizens cried foul regarding the emergency manger’s water rate-making and later water sourcing decision.

It was years later that Flint became synonymous with the concept of environmental injustice.

The settlement of the class action brought as a result of the series of decisions rolling from the appointment and selection the emergency manager through to separation of Flint form the heavily scrutinized water system of Detroit, would not have been possible if the only participants in the efforts to make the parties “whole” were the parties to the suit. Flint required and continues to require more than dollars from the parties to the lawsuit.??

Like it or not, traditional thinking about civil procedure, I came to realize, cannot serve either the interests of the parties toa civil suit nor those of a cavil society. Sometimes as with the “grand bargain” molded out the massive City of Detroit bankruptcy, resolution of a dilemma, problem, lawsuit or “situation” requires investment by stakeholders outside of traditional tor landscape.”

We met in small groups with voices from places as disparate and diverse as the country of Brazil, Hawaii and British Columbia. I was not alone in the euphony that while an environmental harm may lead to individualized injury, neither a verdict nor a party settlement would likely address underlying situations that contributed to that injury.

Nor were mine the only ears that heard the need to utilize a dispute resolution person who (unconstrained by the reasonable proscriptions of civil procedure) could early on in the process both discern and gather a broader stakeholder community to invest in a real solution.?

As I waited in LaGuardia, I realized that many disputes with implications beyond the parties can benefit from a Flint- Detroit approach to resolution. Ah ha!

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I am proudly a full-time mediator and arbitrator with Alterity ADR, the only National ADR firm owned by a woman and person of color.