About JoAnn
JoAnn brings 23 years of litigation practice and a wealth of experience in the areas of insurance and commercial contract disputes, ERISA benefits, managed care, and life, health and disability insurance. Before becoming a neutral, she handled complex commercial cases in numerous state and federal courts and arbitral tribunals across the country, including class actions and matters involving thousands of insurance and benefit claims. She also handled intricate contract disputes involving multiple parties who needed to create or preserve good business relationships with each other and thus required practical approaches to reach “win/win” solutions.
From these experiences, JoAnn has learned to efficiently navigate extremely complicated commercial disputes, even in expedited arbitration settings, while respecting the personal and business interests of the parties at stake.
Addressing disputes in arbitration
JoAnn spent a substantial portion of her litigation career in the arbitration arena. She has handled close to 40 arbitrations as an advocate, ranging from simple contract disputes to complex individual and class matters involving thousands of claims. She has experienced first-hand what works and does not work in the arbitration setting. JoAnn’s creative management of matters in a fast-paced setting facilitates her collaboratively working with all parties to move to final resolution.
JoAnn has utilized this vast experience in her role as an arbitrator on the American Arbitration Association’s healthcare, commercial, consumer, and pension/ERISA panels, which she joined in 2015. With the AAA, she has had the opportunity to address a wide variety of contract disputes as a solo arbitrator and on panels (including as chair), which have reached resolution both before hearing and upon final award. She brings her insightful and diligent approach to each arbitrated matter to ensure each is expeditiously, thoughtfully, and fairly resolved.
Paving the way to resolutions in mediation
In her advocacy tenure, JoAnn focused on early case evaluation with a realistic approach to liability and risk assessment. She understands that litigation can be costly and unpredictable, and the longer a case sits without resolution, the costlier it becomes for all parties’ time, expense, and energy. She also understands that resolving disputes sometimes requires a more compassionate, less adversarial approach in order to reach consensus and closure.
Through this approach, JoAnn has successfully resolved countless disputed matters prior to final trial or hearing through both informal negotiations and formal mediation processes. These negotiated resolutions have involved a wide variety of commercial and insurance contract disputes, including employee life, health, disability and retirement benefits and insurance claims; network and payment disputes between health care providers and health plans; and various contract interpretation and performance disputes between contracted business entities and individuals, among others.