Adjudication outside Construction, Adjudication for Consumer Disputes

Abstract

Adjudication is increasingly seen as the preferred means of resolving many construction and consumer disputes. As one party in dispute observed in a personal communication to the writer “It is a forum to finally express my woes. One can often feel helpless . . . in this situation and the process of adjudication has proved cathartic.” However, the differences between construction adjudication and consumer adjudication are not often understood or appreciated. This paper, first, explores some of those differences using, as an illustration of consumer adjudication, the Communications and Internet Services Scheme (CISAS) administered by IDRS Ltd. for the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and approved by the Office of Communication which is the regulator for the U.K. telecommunications and Internet industry. Second, it looks forward to how the advantages of both may be combined to produce more effective dispute resolution with consistently high standards for resolving differences between parties, ensuring disputes are always effectively and efficiently investigated while streamlining procedures so that they are easy to use, transparent, and cost effective.