As a rule, it's safe to conclude that whenever a disputant in any forum pulls this kind of "I know something that proves I'm right, but I'm not gonna tell you because [insert specious reason here]" crap, he's got nada, he realizes it, and he's weaseling to evade his responsibility to admit it.
That's a reasonable speculation. But if he later does reveal his evidence then he disproves it. And there could be other reasons he might say "You're wrong but I'm not going to argue with you." Like for example, if you are a troll.
Moi? A troll? Perish forfend!
More like Sandy's in the "screwed-and-running-away-with-his-tail-between-his-legs" condition, and he's not honest enough to admit it.
Sandy's in a public forum where he's got to maintain the happy fiction that he respects
most of us in the healing professions, but not yours truly, 'cause I'm supposed to be some kind of "
polymath" poseur. That's in spite of the fact that lawyers are purposefully trained to look upon doctors with absolute contempt, as members of one of their principal prey species.
I've got plenty of colleagues who, for reasons principally having to do with HCFA (now CMS) and other third-party payors, decided after ten or fifteen years in medical practice to go to law school and grow themselves some shark's teeth of their own. They have uniformly related their instructors' inculcation of this "doctors-are-stupid-victims-suited-only-for-our-depredations" attitude in the law school lecture halls.
Why should anybody expect anything different from any average modern American lawyer?
Anent matters of civil tort:
I'm saying, let an arbitrator's common sense decide it.
I've known a number of lawyers over the years who have actually left the practice of law in the sense that they're no longer operating as client advocates in adversarial proceedings but functioning as arbiters. The first one I'd encountered told me about how he'd more or less stumbled into this line of work, handling "amicable" divorces on behalf of
both parties in these proceedings.
Engaged to manage the legal formalities of his clients' divorces, he found that he had no disincentive to abate discord because he wasn't going to get paid anything more if the decree nisi went through. In many cases he functioned more as a marriage counselor helping to resolve the issues that had brought his clients' relationships to the point of dissolution.
He told me that rather liked being a problem solver instead of a "hired gun" for one side or the other.
Of course, I'm willing to bet that he got more billable hours out of each case when he prevented a divorce, too.
Both Heinlein (in
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) and Smith (in
The Probability Broach) offered speculation on how a system of arbitration in an anarchist society might reasonably be presumed to work, and I've no doubt that arbiters who gain reputations for settlements which prove both equitable and durable (in the sense that they tend not to go on to the "coffee-and-pistols-at-dawn" stage of resolution) would find their services in demand.
But relying on "
an arbitrator's common sense" alone would probably not work all that well.
One of the reasons why contract is so important in the ordering of human affairs is that predictability is valuable. Arbitration is not entered into by any party without some expectation that the anticipated outcomes will be consistent with the results of preceding arbitrated settlements.
"Surprise party" arbitration in an AnCap society like the Belt as depicted would likely be exceedingly uncommon, if not because it would be scandal all over the Tanglenet, then because such an action really
would earn the involved arbiter a sharpish need for the finest autodoc Mars produces.
How good d'you think those gadgets might be at handling penetrating traumatic brain injury cases?
Most arbiters with whom I'm familiar - attorneys and non-attorneys alike - take pains to keep themselves well-informed about the published results of prior settlements in their areas of specialization. Not as easy as reading up on precedent case law, of course, because so much of the conditions of resolution achieved by private arbitration are kept
sub rosa under the agreements reached by the participants.
I should think that on Ceres, where Belters seem to take pains to resolve their knottiest problems very much in public, with the Tanglenet providing broad witness access, there would be quite a bit of precedent which an arbiter engaged to handle disputes would be expected to know and to integrate in his/her address of matters brought before him/her.