Chuck Geerhart Mediation and Arbitration Services  

Chuck Geerhart has been conducting mediations and arbitrations for 20 years on a voluntary court-appointed basis. As a trial lawyer who spent nine years on the defense side representing insurance carriers and corporations and the past 18 years as a plaintiff lawyer, he brings to the room a keen understanding of the issues and the needs of both sides.

As a defense lawyer at the Sedgwick and Arnelle Hastie McGee firms, Chuck represented many liability insurance carriers and their insureds in personal injury matters (auto and premises liability cases). He also represented major corporations such as Ford Motor Company, PG&E, the Stanley Works, and Kmart in injury cases, often with a product liability aspect.

As a plaintiffs lawyer, he has handled cases ranging from automobile collisions to power plant boiler collapses, from clergy sexual abuse to a bone in a BBQ chicken pizza resulting in a $2.5 million jury verdict.

His style is facilitative/collaborative. He first tries to determine on which issues there is agreement, and works to forge agreement on remaining issues until a fair settlement that leaves “each side equally unhappy” can be reached. “My approach is that if you have experienced counsel and claims people at the table, we all have a pretty good sense of which issues we can and should agree upon. That leaves us with the knotty issues, which I also believe we can get close on. Then we reach the ultimate issue: what's the case worth?  I will do numbers ferrying (shuttle diplomacy), but I also like to try innovative ways to break logjams, such as bracketing, hypothetical outcomes, and playing out the probable scenarios (BATNA) if there is not a settlement. Late in a session, if negotiations are stalled, I may become evaluative and offer a frank assessment to each side of where I think they are right or wrong. This sometimes breaks logjams.”