On 1 January 2018 meditation was made a prerequisite when filing a lawsuit concerning monetary claims at Employment Tribunals. As a result, parties now have to comply with this pre-litigation condition otherwise they will have their claim overturned due to absence of complying the pre-litigation rules.
It is suggested that mandatory mediation was introduced to accelerate legal proceedings and lower the costs in employment disputes. Mediators must finalize the mandatory mediation process within three weeks from the date of appointment, they can ask for an additional week at most. So the overall maximum 4 weeks of potential mediation is designed to find a solution to the legal dispute without the litigation costs and attorney fees.
Another powerful feature of mandatory mediation is confidentiality. The mediation process should be kept confidential by law and both parties must adhere to a strict confidentially obligation unlike in public trials. If one of the parties or the mediator breaches the confidentially obligation, they can face imprisonment of up to six months as per the Mediation Act. This makes mediation a useful tool for parties who need to keep their issues confidential.
We were able to find a statistic for the mediation cases that took place between January 2018 and May 27 2018, 65% of the cases were resolved by mediators. This is a very strong and much welcome statistic. Turkish courts can take 2 sometimes 3 years to have a case resolved. Our firm even have a (high profile and very complicated yet still it is a fact) class action that has been going on since 2009. So as LLI we are pleased to hear this new law is working, and providing much needed justice/efficiency and speed to the employment disputes. We look forward to more of these kinds of new legislation about the civil and commercial disputes too.
We handle a variety of Turkish employment disputes on behalf of our clients, please contact us if you would like further advice on Turkish Employment Law at info@londonlegalint.co.uk
