The Day a $40 Dispute Broke My Heart (Stories from Mediation)

Recently, in small claims court, my co-mediator and I mediated a case that on paper looked almost absurd: a claim for forty dollars. Cases involving that little money rarely make it to mediation, much less court. But as soon as the plaintiff walked in, we understood that this wasn’t about the money at all. It was about being heard.

He spoke English haltingly, with a thick accent. both of us struggled to understand him, and we could see him struggle to be understood. He had filed the claim, he explained, because he had tried—again and again—to speak with his landlord but had gotten nowhere. “Maybe the mediators can help,” he said. That was the moment we understood the $40 differently: it was the one pathway he felt he had.

The landlord, by contrast, was native-born, white, and comfortable in the system. He laid out the facts: the tenant had failed to pay several years of association fees, and each month came with a $25 late charge. The amount had grown steadily. “He could have come to the board,” the landlord said. “He could have asked for a plan. He didn’t. It’s his fault.”

Maybe. And maybe not.

As mediators, our role is to remain neutral, even when the power dynamics in the room could not be more obvious. An immigrant with limited English on one side. A property owner with institutional fluency on the other. And a legal system that quietly assumes everyone arrives with the same tools.

The tenant kept repeating that he wanted to pay what he owed—he simply hadn’t understood how the late fees accumulated. This was not resistance. It was confusion. The kind that becomes catastrophic when language barriers, fear, and unfamiliar systems collide.

In private session, the landlord finally offered a compromise: a 20% reduction if the tenant could pay immediately. It was clear that immediate payment wasn’t possible. Still, we brought the offer back to him.

He shook his head. “No. All late fees waived,” he said. He genuinely believed that a misunderstanding should not cost him his home.

We returned to the landlord. He was offended—insulted—that the tenant would imagine such an outcome. “He needs to give us something else,” he said.

But the tenant couldn’t. Or didn’t know how. And so we reached an impasse.

The case will now proceed to court, and if I’m honest, there is a very real possibility that this man will lose his home—not because he is unwilling to pay, but because he is navigating a system never designed with him in mind.

Walking away from the mediation, I felt the weight of the imbalance in the room. And yet—and this may seem strange to say—I also felt a renewed belief in the value of mediation.

Because mediation gives us something the legal system alone cannot:

A space where people can speak without fear.

A process that acknowledges human beings, not just numbers.

An opportunity to understand the consequences and choices ahead.

A moment of dignity in systems that rarely offer it.

Mediation cannot fix the entire system, nor does it undo the deep inequities built into it. But it can soften the process long enough for real understanding to surface.

That day, no agreement was reached. The imbalance remained. But for a moment, someone who felt invisible was heard—and that moment mattered.