Some Think New Jersey Could Be a Hub for International Dispute Resolution

After years in the planning stage, an organization offering arbitration and mediation of cross-border business disputes has opened its doors in New Jersey.

From its base in Jersey City, Global Mediation Exchange Center administers a hybrid process combining aspects of arbitration and mediation. Dispute resolutions reached with the help of its roster of experienced neutrals can be confirmed as judgments in 172 countries under a U.N. treaty known as the New York Convention.

Jennifer Brandt, co-founder of Global Mediation Exchange Center. Courtesy photo

International trade is exploding, but American businesses doing business in other countries can still struggle to resolve disputes and enforce judgments. U.S. courts may lack jurisdiction, and even if a judgment is obtained, executing it abroad can be time-consuming and costly, according to the founders of GMXC.

“People like mediation as a process because people buy into it. They own the decision. It’s self-determination. But yet you have the enforceability of arbitration, which is why arbitration was always the process of choice. So we’re giving them the best of both worlds,” said Jennifer Brandt, an attorney in Watchung, New Jersey, and co-founder of GMXC.

Brandt is a director and mediation ambassador for the Foundation for Sustainable Rule of Law Initiatives, a nongovernmental organization that promotes sustainable mediation programs in countries with overburdened court systems, such as Brazil, Bulgaria, Croatia, India and the Republic of Georgia.

Formation of GMXC was contemplated in the New Jersey International Arbitration, Conciliation and Mediation Act, a statute signed into law in 2017. That measure was intended to enhance opportunities for businesses in New Jersey, said Richard Steen, a solo practitioner in Princeton, New Jersey, and another GMXC co-founder. But businesses using the center’s services need not be from New Jersey, Steen said.

Richard Steen, solo attorney in Princeton, New Jersey. Courtesy photo

“So there’s two things. It makes it easier for businesses in New Jersey to do business overseas, and it makes New Jersey an attractive place for people who are otherwise not in New Jersey to come to New Jersey and use this process,” Steen said.

Steen, a former president of the New Jersey State Bar Association, has a practice focusing on construction, complex commercial, environmental, professional responsibility and alternative dispute resolution.

Adoption of the New Jersey statute sent a message that the way the center approaches its mission is permissible, said Laura Kaster, another Princeton solo practitioner and GMXC co-founder.

“There’s no place else that’s doing this that we’re aware of. Nowhere else am I aware of a hybrid process like this. It’s novel, it’s innovative, and it’s cost constrained,” Kaster said.

Kaster was part of the effort that convinced legislators to buy into the concept proposed by GMXC, spreading a message that businesses need a fast, cost-effective solution to cross-border trade disputes as international trade experiences rapid growth.

Laura Kaster. Courtesy photo

“So, they get into these disputes, and they need a solution. And if you provide a risk management solution in New Jersey, we will foster business. By the way, international arbitration is a huge independent source of money for many states, including New York and Florida. It’s become a central way of generating people to come to the state,” Kaster said.

Kaster has 30 years of experience with arbitration, mediation and settlement negotiation in a wide variety of complex commercial and intellectual property disputes.

The GMXC founders said some other states have adopted ordinances such as New Jersey’s but they aren’t aware of any other organization offering similar services.

“New Jersey’s rankings as a good place to do business has fallen in the last few years. And this is a means of really bringing it up to where it should be. I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the U.S. that is doing it,” Brandt said.