Mediation experience

Ronald is a Solicitor and Consultant at Eversheds, was accredited by CEDR as a Mediator in 1993 and is a member of CEDR Faculty.

He mediates at the rate of two per month.  The range of subject matter has always been extremely wide in terms of both geography and subject matter. His mediation experience includes a number of mediations in England, Scotland and Ireland.

Mediation subject matters include

• Construction and engineering
• Shipping
• IT
• Sport
• Clinical Negligence
• Trusts
• Housing
• Employment
• Professional Negligence
• Partnership
• Property
• General commercial

Cases mediated include

• A £1m per annum plus turnover dispute concerning IT equipment support – settlement achieved with a new Contract negotiated through the Mediation and subsequently repeated in a new Pan European Contract.
• A £136M contractual dispute concerning medical service provision.
• A dispute concerning obligations between a major Petrol Company and a Garage Licensee.
• A Construction dispute concerning a high value development.
• A Housing dispute involving a Housing Association and disaffected tenants involving a two-stage process of identifying the resolution of the alleged defects and subsequently the issues concerning distress and loss of amenity claims.
• Professional Indemnity claims involving Solicitors’ negligence, Personal Injury Claims and other issues.
• A 3 party dispute concerning a Professional Practice involving allegations of fraud and misconduct.
• A dispute concerning clinical misdiagnosis.
• An employment issue involving discrimination and sexual harassment. 
• A £1m plus dispute concerning a disputed Will – resolved in 1 day.
• An internal dispute concerning the management of a tennis club.

Feedback includes

“there is no doubt that this dispute could not have been resolved without Ronald’s firm control of the process”.

“we were surprised by the patience which Ronald showed during the extremely difficult and emotional mediation”.

“Ronald is an extremely good listener”. 

“…he was really good. I was very happy to have him as the mediator and you could tell he has lots of experience”

“ there was nothing Ronald could have done better on the day.” 

“he was a very great pleasure to deal with”

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the calm, reasonable and professional manner in which you have conducted this difficult investigation”.

Personal style

In the days leading up to the mediation, he places great emphasis on the need to build good working relationships with the Parties and their Advisers, and he prepares thoroughly.  He is respected for  the ease with which the Parties and their Advisers can talk to him and looks whenever possible to establish the capabilities of a long-term relationship between the disputing Parties. He encourages the parties to concentrate on the issues which really matter.

Professional background

As a member of the CEDR Faculty, he regularly trains mediators in the UK and the EU as well as in Nigeria, Pakistan and Hong Kong. He was appointed as the ADR Expert in a recent EC project in Turkey and included additional training in Syria. Currently, he is working in Bangladesh on an ADR feasibility project.

Ronald graduated in Law from Cambridge University and he specialised in litigation with his firm for over 30 years.

His work has taken him to Canada and Chile on several occasions and he has appeared in many of the Courts and Tribunals throughout England and Scotland.  Because of the nature of his firm’s Practice he has also had a long relationship with the Private Client Sector and as a result is a Trustee of a large number of high value Trusts.

He was Managing Partner and subsequently Senior Partner of Wilkinson Maughan, latterly Eversheds, until May 2000 after 8 years in those positions. Subsequently he has become Head of ADR for his firm as a consultant with responsibility for the development of the firm’s ADR capability over all its offices from Dublin to Shanghai.

Professional specialisms in dispute resolution include

• Professional negligence
  Acting for both claimants and defendants – solicitors, accountants and architects involving typically issues with clients and contractors
• Partnership
  Dissolution of professional partnerships, especially solicitors, accountants, medical practices and architects with the establishment of a blend of new partnerships or restructured existing partnerships
• Engineering
  Civil (e.g. construction of entire hospitals and major extension projects), electrical (e.g. control panels for ships) and  mechanical (e.g. gearbox design of ship and galvanising plant). Also metallurgy – appropriateness of materials in terms of strength and suitability in the working environment
• Construction
  Oil rig construction, major scaffolding projects, advice to engineering companies, design faults, building and development programmes for NHS, including contentious work
• Shipping
  - Shipbuilding and Ship repair contracts, wet shipping, ship arrest
  - Ronald was Legal Adviser to British Shipbuilders between 1989 and 2003 following the closure of their in-house Legal Department.
• Property
  Title/ownership, boundary disputes, wills/trusts/estates
• Utilities
  Contractual advice
• Agriculture and country matters
  Farming, farming management, including hands-on experience, farm management as attorney for elderly clients, fox hound pack management amongst other rural client work. He has had 20 years of experience in managing 3/4M trees on two forestry estates in Scotland for a client.

Other dispute resolution involvement

Ronald was Legal Adviser to British Shipbuilders for 15 years following the closure of their in-house Legal Department in 1989. He was also a non-executive Director of an NHS Trust for several years as well as being chairman of its Mental Health Act Panel.

Ronald set up his own in-house Training Programme for his firm in 1994 to enable fee-earners to understand mediation and to work effectively with clients at mediation.

Within Eversheds since 1997 Ronald is now National Chairman of the firm’s ADR Group and part of his role is to continue that in-house training throughout the firm.

He has a responsibility for training 552 litigators and that is being extended by him to other fee-earners in the Commercial and Corporate Sectors.  His work in this field brought his firm the coveted CEDR Award in 2008 for ADR development of ADR in professional firms. In anticipation of the Woolf Reforms to the Civil Procedure Rules, he was one of the prime movers in establishing Northern Dispute Resolutions Limited in 1995 and of which he was chairman for12 years.  He lectures frequently on ADR to a wide variety of audiences.

External interests

Ronald has had a lifetime of involvement with rowing  from school to university and then to a commercial rowing club competing at many UK regattas from Henley to the Tyne as well as at Hamburg Regatta. He was a member of the Amateur Rowing  Association Council for 5 years and a member of its Junior Rowing Committee for 3 years. An umpire for over 25 years, Ronald has been chairman of the 175 year-old Tyne Regatta for several years. He has had 20 years of experience in managing 3/4M trees on two forestry estates in Scotland for a client.

He has been a longstanding member of the Mental Health Foundation North East Branch.