Ward Receives Dispute Resolution Section Peace Award
Judge J. Randolph Ward was honored in March by the NCBA Dispute Resolution Section as the 2023 recipient of the Peace Award. The award honors individuals who have made a special contribution or commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes.
Ward has devoted the better part of his career to doing just that, most recently as a judge with the N.C. Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) and before that as a commissioner on the N.C. Industrial Commission. His devotion to mediation and dispute resolution predates the formation of the section by which he was honored.
Jim Cooley, who serves as chair of the Dispute Resolution Section, noted that Judge Ward was “recognized in particular for his role in leading the development of the Industrial Commission’s mediation program during his years as a commissioner as well as his later efforts in promoting mediation of disputes at the OAH.”
Ward grew up in the central Piedmont region of North Carolina and is a graduate of Wingate College (A.A.), Wake Forest University (B.A.) and Wake Forest University School of Law (J.D.)
Prior to entering public service, he engaged in private practice, primarily in Durham.
“I was honored to be chosen to chair the Fair Housing Task Force for the City of Durham by my fellow members,” Ward said, “even though I represented the Board of Realtors. I admired the negotiation procedure in that statute, although I thought it came a little late in the process.”
Judge J. Randolph Ward, left, accepts Peace Award from Frank Laney.
While practicing in Durham, Ward “learned about mediation and other forms of dispute resolution being explored by North Carolina courts and lawyers,” said Frank Laney, a past section chair and Peace Award recipient, in presenting the award. “Randy joined the Bar Association’s Dispute Resolution Committee, which was responsible for setting up and running the District Court arbitration pilot program, which was operating in Durham, his home county.
“With the success of the arbitration program, the Dispute Resolution Committee then turned to exploring using mediation in Superior Court cases. In 1988, Randy was appointed as one of three commissioners of the Industrial Commission, which handles workers’ compensation cases. But he continued to participate in the Dispute Resolution Committee and its efforts to implement mediation in Superior Court.”
At this point, Laney continued, the Industrial Commission had developed an overwhelming backlog of cases numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
“Lawsuits were threatened if the Industrial Commission did not get cases processed in a timely manner,” Laney said. “Randy championed founding a mediation program to take on the huge backlog. With the support of Chairman J. Howard Bunn Jr., they held hearings, gathered public support, and established the Industrial Commission’s mediation program.”
“In the first year, thousands of cases were mediated every month. About 75-80% of the cases were resolved in mediation and the backlog was reduced and eventually eliminated. Under Randy’s leadership, and due to his foresight, the IC mediation program was a great success and continues to this day as a robust part of the resolution of workers’ compensation cases, a program of similar scope and impact as the Superior Court Mediated Settlement Conferences program.”
Following his service on the Industrial Commission, Ward joined the Duke Private Adjudication Center and its mediation panel, and later served as a judge with the Office of Administrative Hearings. There, Laney concluded, he continued to participate in their mediation program, mediating OAH cases.
“Mediation came along at a time,” Ward said, “when there was concern about a growing lack of civility in the legal profession, and ‘Rambo lawyers.’
“That may be more personal for me because I am the son and father of lawyers, and have expected and hoped that colleagues would relate in the way Shakespeare admired about lawyers: ‘Do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.’
“I think mediation has encouraged that spirit, then and now.”
That spirit, Ward added, was an integral part of his work with the Office of Administrative Hearings.
“I learned just how pervasive the influence of mediation had become when I became a judge of the Office of Administrative Hearings,” Ward said, “hearing cases ranging from allocating hospital services, to special education, to environmental enforcement, to personnel cases – each with varying procedure.
“Mediation is a prerequisite to the litigation of State personnel cases. Other laws and rules provided for mediation-like conferences or reconciliation procedures. OAH’s Bar made sophisticated use of mediation, requesting it at varying stages of litigation, based on the posture of their cases. Most of OAH judges had mediation training, encouraged and sometimes ordered mediations, and conducted their judicial settlement conferences as mediations.”
For more on this subject, please refer to this article by Judge Ward, published on the Dispute Resolution Section page of NCBarBlog in recognition of the 30th anniversary of North Carolina’s Workers’ Compensation system.
Dispute Resolution Section Peace Award Recipients
2002 – Carmon Stuart
2003 – Scott Bradley
2004 – Frank Laney
2005 – Jacqueline Clare
2006 – J. Anderson Little
2007 – Judge Ralph Walker
2008 – Charlotte Adams, Beth Okum and Tan Schwab
2009 – Chief Justice James G. Exum
2010 – Judge James Long
2011 – John Schafer
2012 – Judge Jim Gates
2013 – George Walker
2014 – M. Ann Anderson
2015 – Mark Morris
2016 – Leslie C. Ratliff
2017 – Rene Stemple Trehy
2018 – Barbara Ann Davis
2019 – LeAnn Nease Brown
2020 – Bob Beason
2021 – Roy Baroff
2022 – John Sarratt
2023 – Judge J. Randolph Ward
Russell Rawlings is director of external affairs and communications for the North Carolina Bar Association.