Chapter 17. Georgia Uniform Mediation Act · Last amended 2021 · Last verified July 17, 2026
Waiver under this chapter is deliberately hard to accomplish by accident. Subsection (a) requires an express waiver, made in a record, from every mediation party — not just the party who wants to disclose something, and not through a general release. When the privilege being waived belongs to the mediator, the mediator must also expressly waive it; when it belongs to a nonparty participant, that nonparty participant must expressly waive it too. A single party cannot unilaterally waive the mediator’s privilege or another participant’s, and nothing short of an express, recorded statement counts.
Subsection (b) closes off a different kind of unfairness — using the privilege as both sword and shield. If a person discloses a mediation communication, or makes a representation about one, in a way that prejudices someone else in a proceeding, that person cannot then invoke the privilege to stop the prejudiced party from responding. The preclusion is narrow by design: it reaches only as far as necessary to let the prejudiced person answer the disclosure or representation, not the mediation as a whole.
Subsection (c) addresses a mediation put to criminal use. A person who intentionally uses a mediation to plan, attempt, or commit a crime, or to conceal an ongoing crime or ongoing criminal activity, loses the ability to assert the privilege under Code Section 9-17-3. Code Section 9-17-5 separately strips the privilege from communications used to plan or conceal criminal conduct — this subsection adds a personal consequence for the wrongdoer on top of that.
No. Subsection (a) requires express waiver by all mediation parties in a record, and if the mediator’s or a nonparty participant’s own privilege is at stake, that person must expressly waive it as well.
No. Waiver under subsection (a) must be express and made in a record — implied waiver from conduct or silence does not satisfy the statute.
Under subsection (b), that person cannot invoke the privilege to stop the prejudiced person from responding, though the preclusion reaches only as far as necessary to let the prejudiced person answer.
Yes. Subsection (c) precludes a person who intentionally uses the mediation to plan, attempt, or commit a crime, or to conceal an ongoing crime, from asserting the privilege under Code Section 9-17-3.
It must be “in a record,” which under Code Section 9-17-1 includes information stored electronically and retrievable in perceivable form, not only paper — but a purely verbal statement during the mediation session does not meet that standard.
Code 1981, § 9-17-4, enacted by Ga. L. 2021, p. 646, § 2/SB 234.