Change is on the horizon, in the form of compulsion to mediate civil disputes. In the meantime, the ebb and flow of a judicial policy of “encouragement” and “sanction” continues.
The court’s efforts at encouragement have fortunately not taken the extreme form contemplated in 2013 in Wright v Michael Wright Supplies:
“You may be able to drag the horse (a mule offers a better metaphor) to water, but you cannot force the wretched animal to drink if it stubbornly resists. I suppose you can make it run around the litigation course so vigorously that in a muck sweat it will find the mediation trough more friendly and desirable. But none of that provides the real answer.”
(Paragraph 3, judgment.)
