Ron White began mediating disputes in 1996 and now works full-time as a mediator of commercial claims and personal injury disputes for IVAMS Arbitration Mediation Services (www.ivams.com)

Ron was raised in Covina, California, and after graduating from high school lived in Japan for two years, where he learned to speak Japanese and developed a great appreciation for the culture and traditions of that land and its people. Upon his return from Japan, Ron enrolled at Brigham Young University where he studied international relations and Japanese, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1981, and law, earning a Juris Doctorate degree in 1984. It was during this time that Ron met and married his wife, Julie, and they are now the proud parents of six children, although their first child succumbed to a congenital heart defect at an early age.

Ron is admitted to practice law in the states of California, Arizona and Utah. As a trial lawyer, he worked on a variety of commercial disputes including large construction projects such as dams, convention centers, waste water treatment facilities, high rise buildings, housing tracts and condominium developments. He has defended insurance companies in bad faith insurance claims and prosecuted bad faith insurance claims for plaintiffs, at one point being named plaintiffs’ liaison counsel to the Los Angeles County Superior Court for hundreds of insurance claims arising out of the Northridge earthquake. In another case, a jury awarded Ron's client damages for injuries sustained on the property of a Fortune 100 company, one of the few verdicts rendered against this company by an Orange County  jury.

Over the years, Ron has represented cities, counties and other public agencies, large corporations and small businesses, individuals and associations. However, in 1995, Ron litigated a case that would forever change the course of his professional life. The case was hotly contested; twenty-five million dollars were at stake and forty to fifty thousand dollars were being spent each month to litigate the case. The projected litigation budgets exceeded a million dollars for each side. Then the lawyers agreed to try a fairly new concept at the time, mediation, to see if the case could be resolved prior to trial. Through the assistance of a skilled mediator the case was resolved to the satisfaction of both parties, at which time Ron became a zealous believer in the benefits of mediation. Consequently, he enrolled in a mediation training course at Harvard Law School in the fall of 1995 and that training was followed by advanced mediation training at Pepperdine Law School’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. In 1999, Ron became a certified commercial and construction mediator, and he has since received additional mediation training from the Los Angeles County Superior Court, including training to resolve personal injury cases, in conjunction with his appointment as a mediator for the court.

When he is not mediating cases, Ron enjoys spending time with his family body surfing at the beach or skiing on the slopes. He also enjoys spending time serving in his church and in the community. He was elected to serve as a trustee on the board of education for his children’s school district. He has coached all of his children’s sports teams and has been involved on various committees for the Boy Scouts of America. 

       Ron's Resume