The Lagos Multi-Door Courthouse (LMDC) said on Saturday that it successfully resolved a total of 780 cases out of the 1,708 referred to it within the last 10 years. Caroline Etuk, the Director of the centre, disclosed this in an interview in Lagos.
Etuk said that most of the cases were referred to the court from the High Court of Lagos State, adding that the 780 cases were amicably settled. “The cases we have settled during our annual Settlement Week since we started in 2002, ranges from breach of contract, landlord and tenant disputes, family matters as well as defamation.
?Generally, we handle the whole range of matters that we have on the litigation track. We had a lot of banking cases as well. We even had people coming in whose matters were not referred from court and they wanted to be part of the Settlement Week.”
Etuk said the outcomes of the settlements were sent to the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) judges who entered them as the judgment of the court. The director condemned the poor response of lawyers and litigants to ADR and attributed this to the low figure of cases handled by the court in the last 10 years.
She said that the introduction of mediation and arbitration into the legal process was aimed at reducing the number of civil cases in courts. According to her, embracing the ADR process saves time, is cost effective and also helps in maintaining cordial relationships between the parties in the dispute.
