Short answer. No. All proceedings during both court-annexed mediation and judicial dispute resolution are confidential. If judicial dispute resolution fails to produce a settlement, the case simply returns to trial before the original court on the previously agreed dates, without anything said there carrying over.
What the law says
Only if the judge of the court to which the case was originally raffled is convinced that settlement is still possible, the case may be referred to another court for judicial dispute resolution. The judicial dispute resolution shall be conducted within a non-extendible period of fifteen calendar days from notice of failure of the court-annexed mediation. If judicial dispute resolution fails, trial before the original court shall proceed on the dates agreed upon. All proceedings during the court-annexed mediation and the judicial dispute resolution shall be confidential.
Rule 18, Section 9 — Judicial [d]ispute [r]esolution. Read the full provision →
When a case gets referred for judicial dispute resolution
Referral of a case to another court for judicial dispute resolution is not treated as automatic simply because mediation happened to fail beforehand. It happens only if the judge of the court to which the case was originally raffled is genuinely convinced that settlement remains still possible — a specific, individualized judicial assessment gates whether the case actually proceeds on to this further stage at all.
A strict, non-extendible timeframe
Once a case has actually been referred, judicial dispute resolution must then be conducted within a non-extendible period of fifteen calendar days counted from notice of the failure of the earlier court-annexed mediation. That fifteen-day window is expressly fixed and does not stretch or extend for any reason, which keeps this particular settlement effort from potentially delaying the underlying case indefinitely.
What happens if it doesn't work
If judicial dispute resolution ultimately fails to produce any settlement, the case itself does not simply stall out as a result — trial before the original court shall proceed on the dates already agreed upon earlier. The case simply returns to the very same track it was already on before the referral happened, continuing on the schedule that had already been set.
The confidentiality guarantee
All proceedings during both the court-annexed mediation and the subsequent judicial dispute resolution are expressly confidential under this rule. This built-in confidentiality is precisely what allows the parties to negotiate candidly and openly during these settlement efforts, without having to worry that admissions, offers, or positions taken there will later resurface as evidence if the case ultimately proceeds on to trial before the original court. This confidentiality binds the parties and their counsel; it does not, however, prevent the mediator or JDR judge from later handling matters outside the settlement talks themselves, since only what was said during the mediation and JDR sessions is shielded, not the case record as a whole.
Related provisions
- Rule 18, Section 9 — Judicial [d]ispute [r]esolution
- Rule 18, Section 8 — Court
- Rule 18, Section 10 — Judgment after pre