If a conflicts check had been undertaken prior to the deposition following the Chevron case, special master Max Gitter may not have been forced to stop the deposition to reveal that he had a relationship with executives of the corporation that provided funding to the Ecuadorian plaintiffs. The parties would have been assured that the supposedly neutral party presiding over the deposition did not have any relationships with the corporation that financed the dispute and would have been able to consider Gitter's relationships before the deposition began. This high-profile example demon- strates the potential prevalence of third-party funding in dispute resolution and the importance of conducting a conflicts check prior to the proceedings, whether they be litigation or arbitration. The parties in the Donziger deposition got lucky, so to speak; the conflict was relatively minor and could be waived. In other situations, however, the conflict of interest may be more serious and result in the proceedings being forced to start anew.
展开▼
