Policy-Discussion

[Iang <iang AT cacert.org>]

Hi all,

One of the unfortunate side-effects of CAcert's Arbitration is that all filings are often treated with the full force, as if they were all really important civil matters.  This is not really scaleable.  Giving all the seriousness of a criminal-jury trial to a lightweight case, or one that just doesn't seem to attract attention, will not work.  It should be clearly seen as a signal to drop the case.  If not, why not?

In DRP it says

If no Arbitrator accepts the dispute, the case is closed with status "declined."

Which should be pretty clear.  If it's not clear enough, perhaps amend DRP?  But let's see what is not clear first.

"If no Arbitrator..." probably means active arbitration.  No point in waiting for the inactive ones to say yes or no, because they are ... inactive.

"...accepts the case..." raises a notification question both to the Arbitrator and back to the DRO or other agent that is responsible for handling this.  If there is good reason to believe ("the reasonable man test" ?) that notification is done perhaps by the active Arbitration list or other means, and nothing has been heard within a time, then we've reached a conclusion - none have accepted the case.

How long is a time?  Well, for small cases, I would say a month.  This was in the minds of the authors when DRP was written.  For anything else, judgement applies, but likely 3 months would suffice for all but the most distressing cases.  Certainly, in no case longer than a year.

The notion that there is a case filed a year later with no arbitrator signals abuse.  We are also about protecting the respondents, and they *must* be given equal protection.  If there is no Arbitrator to respond to, they cannot respond.  Yet it is their right to respond.  This cannot go on for ever, it must be terminated otherwise we are in breach of our principles and the laws of the land.

Then, "the case is closed ..." "  Closing is clear, right?  Shut down, archived, dropped from the public record.  It never received a fair hearing so it must not be allowed to haunt the future.

Finally, "... with status "declined." "  Status "declined" is simply there to indicate it has been closed because it gained no attention from the Arbitrator.  This is a signal that it didn't have much or enough merit.  That is a signal no more, that isn't a judgement.  But it needs to be distinguished from "Dismissed" which literally means "this case has no merit" being a binary.

So, an open question.  Is the situation not clear enough?  Or do we need to amend the DRP?  Either angle is fine.

iang