United States Lags in Affordable and Accessible Civil Justice: Opportunity for ADR?

According to Responsive Law, the U.S. spectacularly underperforms in providing affordable and accessible civil justice. In that category, it ranked 65th out of 99 globally in the World Justice Project's annual Rule of Law Index. For reference, that puts us in a four-way tie with Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uganda.

Formation of Settlement Agreement

The Texas Supreme Court decided an interesting case about a settlement agreement being formed even though the offeror may not have wanted that.  As Jeremy Telman explains:

Amedisys threatened that it would not settle below six figures.  Kingwood responded with a settlement offer of $90,000, expecting that Amedisys would reject the offer and trigger Rule 167 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which would allow Kingwood to recover litigation costs if the case went to trial and resulted in a judgment considerably less favorable to Amedisys than the settlement offer.

Amedisys accepted the settlement offer.  This apparently was not what Kingwood wanted or expected, and Kingwood refused to treat Amedisys's response as an acceptance.