Sally Soprano/Diego Primadonna for Real

If negotiation professors ever need to argue to their students that their negotiation scenarios are realistic, here is a nice article to share.  A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal covered the story of Ronaldo, the Brazilian soccer star, who is interested in making a comeback.  The truth is remarkably similar to the case of Diega Primadonna, offered as a negotiation case in our casebook on dispute resolution, and similar to the case of Sally Soprano, offered by the Program on Negotiation and other textbooks.  Aging star, sidelined by injury, returns to game with creative contract to meet both parties’ needs. 

In March, after 384 days off the field, Ronaldo entered a soccer stadium again, this time wearing the shirt of São Paulo’s Corinthians for a match in an agricultural town of 95,000 deep in Brazil’s interior. Despite lumbering back some 20 pounds overweight, Ronaldo has scored five goals in seven appearances and tapped into a huge fan base in a nation where soccer is called a second religion. There’s already talk about putting the striker back on Brazil’s national team.

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Dispute Resolution Surges Forward at Marquette

As reported by the university yesterday, I am delighted to announce that the Dispute Resolution Program at Marquette continues to receive national acclaim.  With over ten years of dispute resolution programming and curricula at the Law School, we continue to grow by leaps and bounds.  In any given year, we have close to 150 students in our various dispute resolution classes and clinics.  Two years ago, we created the Client Skills Board, a board mirroring the traditional Moot Court Board, that oversees law student participation in the non-moot-court competitions, including the ABA Client Counseling Competition, ABA Negotiation Competition, ABA Representation in Mediation Competition, and the invitational ICC International Commercial Mediation Competition held in Paris.  Marquette students can now participate in two different intramurals (in negotiation and in mediation advocacy) to be selected for one of the two teams representing the Law School at the regional ABA competitions.  In addition to our past history of winning teams in mediation competitions, in the last two years we won the regional competitions in the ABA Client Counseling Competition. 

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Wisconsin Court Affirms Arbitration Award of Reinstatement

In a very interesting decision by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals last week, the Court upheld an arbitration award against the large household goods store Menard’s for employment discrimination against, wait for it, its own in-house lawyer.  As reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,

Menard Inc. must reinstate a woman it fired as vice president and general counsel over a pay dispute, 3rd District judges for the state Court of Appeals said in a decision released Tuesday.

Dawn M. Sands filed a lawsuit in Eau Claire County citing the Equal Pay Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act. She claimed gender-based pay discrimination, asserting that similarly situated male employees were paid more.

A three-person arbitration panel found in her favor and awarded compensatory and punitive damages. The panel also ordered Menard to reinstate Sands with a specific salary and bonus. Menard balked and asked the appellate court to overturn an order by Eau Claire Circuit Judge Paul J. Lenz that had upheld the arbitration panel.

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