Peter Y. Wolfe, Sullivan County Superior Court clerk since 1988, has been named coordinator of state court mediation efforts, allowing him to work full-time on his long-term interest in alternative dispute resolution.

Wolfe, who served as clerk for almost 17 years, has been replaced by James Peale.

Wolfe, who practiced privately in Sullivan County from 1981 to 1988 until his appointment as clerk, said that early in his career he became interested in mediation, and participated in and helped found local community mediation programs. He helped found the Lake Sunapee Mediation Program and volunteered as a mediator in the Concord District Court in the mid-1980s.  At the time, alternative dispute resolution wasn’t well accepted in the legal profession. Wolfe said he had no exposure to ADR methods in law school and he recalled the chilly reception a Bar committee received in the early 1980s when it recommended that courts require litigants in civil cases be required to attend a program explaining the option of mediation.

The courts today are increasingly embracing mediation and ADR, to the extent of making mediation and other non-litigation methods the preferred means of resolving disputes brought to the courts.

“Peter Wolfe has been a leader in development of alternative dispute resolution programs in our courts since the early 1990s,” Chief Justice Broderick said in a statement announcing Wolfe’s appointment. “His experience will be invaluable as we seek to further expand our efforts to find ways for our citizens to resolve dispute outside a courtroom.

“This new effort to strengthen and expand ADR is consistent with our commitment in the Judicial Branch to making justice accessible and affordable for all New Hampshire citizens,” the Chief Justice said.

In conjunction with Wolfe’s appointment, the Chief Justice also has created a Judicial Branch “Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution Services” to be chaired by Associate Supreme Court Justice Linda S. Dalianis. The committee will review current ADR services provided in the Superior Court and examine how they could be enhanced or expanded. The new committee will also work on the plan for the permanent Office of Alternative Dispute Resolution. 

Members of the new ADR services committee are: Superior Court Judges Robert E. K. Morrill and Carol Ann Conboy;  ADR coordinator Peter Wolfe; Attorneys Peter Cowan, Emily Rice, George Moore, Russell F. Hilliard,  Melinda Gehris, Kelleigh Domaingue, John Garvey, Jack B. Middleton, Jamie Hage, William Mulvey, Richard Moquin and Scott Flegal; Carroll County Superior Court Clerk Patricia Ann Lenz; Tammy Lenski, Ed. D; and Dr. James Squires, a member of the New Hampshire Citizens Commission on the State Courts.

Wolfe said his first priority will be to work with the ADR Services Committee on “creating a comprehensive superior court mediation program for civil cases. The new committee,” he said, “will be looking at the process of how mediation should be done — and that will  include the question of whether mediators should be paid for civil cases in superior court.”

In interviews, Chief Justice Broderick has said that he believes that a key program such as Rule 170 should not rely on volunteers.”

A variety of ADR programs are now available statewide, including mediation in small claims and probate cases, and in certain family court cases. In those cases, mediators are paid, either by litigants (in marital cases) or by filing fees. However, volunteers from the Bar conduct mediations in the Rule 170 program, with which Wolfe has been associated since its beginning. Today, the Rule 170 program is mandatory in civil cases in Hillsborough, Merrimack, Sullivan and Rockingham counties, and voluntary elsewhere in the state.

Wolfe said the Rule 170 was created in 1991-1992, and he attributes its establishment to the support of then-Superior Court Chief Justice Joseph DiClerico. Under DiClerico’s successor, Chief Justice Joseph P. Nadeau, the program began to make significant inroads into civil case backlogs in the superior courts in the mid-1990s, which brought the New Hampshire Superior Court acclaim as the No. 1 trial court system in the country in disposition rates, according to the National Center for State Courts.

Wolfe said that Justice Nadeau helped solidify mediation as an option in civil cases by the institution of structuring conferences and other measures to involve judges more in the management of their cases. “Trial management really helped mediation take off,” Wolfe said.  

This article incorporates material from the NH Judicial branch news release announcing Wolfe’s appointment.

Peter Y. Wolfe