Welcome to Geneva Mediation


I. Jean A. Mirimanoff offers his services as a mediator or co-mediator fr, in French and English, and in three areas where he acquired a long experience and a solid theoretical knowledge. These are in commercial (international and domestic), real estate and inheritance disputes. He intervenes both before the start of legal proceedings (conventional mediation) and during the trial itself (judiciary mediation).

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II. Generally, mediation is recommended whenever the parties have had or are still having a lasting factual or legal relationship.

The commercial area of mediation allows people and companies in business a joint relationship to find solutions based on their business environment, economic, financial, social, technical, legal and personnel. Every business aims to reduce costs. Those of civil procedure and arbitration are often disproportionate and do not account for indirect costs caused by the disruption of the links: you have to reinvest to find a new agent, a new supplier, a new product or a new service, another patent or other mark, new premises or land, etc.

Maintain the contractual relationship between companies and labor relations within the company and responds to economic imperatives. 

The same considerations apply in the real estate, whether its law on construction or the law on the lease, the best interests of the partners will lead them to focus on positive and lasting solutions.

Mediation in inheritance disputes can have two aspects. The preventive form happens during the lifetime of the de cuius that allows a facilitated negotiation between him and his heirs, preparing and anticipating writing a will or inheritance agreement designed in concert, thus sustainable. Mediation as conflict resolution after the opening of the will allows the heirs to relive their history, remove misunderstandings, and find solutions that are fair and appropriate for everyone.  

The field of neighborhood conflicts largely overlaps with that of the real estate. Conflicts between owners of adjoining villas on the easement or hedge trimming between residents of a condo per floor on the proper use of common, among members of a cooperative housing corporation, with an inheritance of property, or real estate investment companies on whether to proceed or not to work, etc


III. Conflict problems and methods of prevention, solving and/or reducing their effects are the main themes of the vast career of Jean A. Mirimanoff.

 
During his legal bar training, he was sent after the "Six Day War" to the Middle East as a delegate of the ICRC in the occupied territories. Having passed his bar exam, he joined the organization as a Legal Adviser for five years. He participated in the preparation of the two draft Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions on the protection of victims of armed conflicts. He presented the texts related to the protection of the civilian population in the Diplomatic Conference on International Humanitarian Law (CDDH). The principles of the Red Cross (humanity, impartiality, independence, neutrality and voluntary), the lack of power and the confidentiality of its proceedings awakened his attention on the role of third in dealing with conflicts.

During his three years in the federal administration in Berne, Jean A. Mirimanoff represented Switzerland in many international forums (EPO, WIPO, UNCTAD, and OECD). He was initiated into parliamentary diplomacy with debates on intellectual property and technological transfer while discussions on positional negotiations were carried out.

Called to join the Judiciary of Geneva, he made the traditional curriculum, which comprises of the following; the Office of the Attorney General (5 years), the Chair of the Police Court and the Court of rent and lease (5 years) and the civil court (2 decades). He completed both the traditional tasks of a sitting-judge (instruct and judge) as well as the mission, which is different, of the conciliator magistrate.

 The conciliatory path led him to devote himself (parallel to the Civil Court activities) to the Commission for Conciliation of rent and lease (CBL), which he assumed the presidency for 10 years, while also turning to mediation. He got an invitation to chair the working group in charge of the Court and to present a draft law on civil mediation (October 2004). He undertook, in this context, its first mediation training, which was organized by the FSA. He then graduated as a mediator of CEFOC (Geneva). He supported the bill before the Judiciary Committee of the Geneva Parliament, who charged him to supplement it with a mechanism of guarantees for the qualification and ethics of mediators (Recommendation Committee on civil and penal mediation, in which he represents the Judiciary). Sworn in as a mediator by the Geneva Government in 2005, he was then accredited with the Swiss Chamber of Commercial Mediation (SCCM).

Having left the Civil Court in October 2007, he entirely devoted himself to the alternative dispute resolution and gradually introduced the tools of mediation during the course of conciliation: the rate of conciliation and of withdrawal before the CBL increased from 35 % in 1999 to 50% in 2009. He participated several times a year at seminars and workshops for amicable resolution in Switzerland and abroad.

From then, he practiced as an independent mediator or in co-mediation, in French or English in the following sectors, commercial (domestic and international), real estate and inheritance. He publishes in many journals, articles on conflict management, mediation, and conciliation. He was called as an expert by the Council of Europe (Roundtable in Sochi, 2005); has initiated two international conferences (2008: Geneva, 2010: Moscow) for the European Association of Magistrates for the Mediation (GEMME; founded the Swiss branch, and was its general secretary from 2004 to June 2010). He initiated and led a training program; "Introduction to Conflict Management" (2008-2010), with the goal (achieved) to introduce mediation in the program of the Geneva School of Avocatory. In 2011, he edited and co-wrote in French the book: "Mediation in the Swiss legal order, a lasting justice for the 3rd millennium" (Helbing & Lichtenhahn, Basel, October 2011."