Robert Coulson, an international leader in the field of arbitration and dispute resolution, died on Sept. 9 at Stamford Hospital following a stroke. He was 93 and lived in Riverside for 40 years.
He was president and CEO of the American Arbitration Association for two decades, and a tireless advocate for more efficient and equitable alternatives to litigation.
“Almost any human activity is more profitable than worrying a dreary lawsuit through the courts,” he wrote in “How to Stay Out of Court” in 1968. “More often than not, some better method for resolution can be found.”
He was born in New Rochelle, N.Y., to Abby Stewart Coulson and Robert Earl Coulson.
He graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, in 1943, Yale University in 1950, and Harvard Law School in 1953.
He served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the Harbor Craft Company in England.
After law school, he practiced law in Boston and New York before joining the American Arbitration Association. At the AAA, he helped to expand the use of ADR in America and promoted arbitration through the International Council on Commercial Arbitration.
He was a lifelong sailor who started racing a Brutal Beast in Marblehead at age seven and owned many sailboats, from small boats to frostbite dinghies to a 40-foot cutter, the Finn MacCumhaill. He won the National Junior Sailing Championship Sears Trophy twice. At Yale his team won the national intercollegiate championship for a record three years. He sailed the Finn for 20 years, winning trophies on New York Yacht Club cruises, the Southern Ocean Racing Circuit, the St. Pete to Havana Race in 1950, and many other races. In Riverside he continued to win prizes with his 30-foot sailboat, Finn Ratoon, most recently last summer. He was a member of the New York Yacht Club and Riverside Yacht Club.
After retirement, he served as an arbitrator on commercial and labor disputes. He wrote several novels based on his offshore racing experiences and a memoir entitled “A Cheerful Skeptic, Sailing Through Life.” He enjoyed travel, painting, walking his dogs, some whom he took on local races, and volunteering in Greenwich, where he served on the Planning and Zoning Board of Appeals.
He is survived by Cynthia Coulson, his wife of 57 years; their sons Crocker, Cromwell, and Christopher Coulson; his daughter from his first marriage, Deirdre Macnab, and his brother Richard Coulson, as well as ten grandchildren: Saskia, Calder, Casimir, Capability, Callum, Maud, Calypso, and Neve Coulson, and Ian and Graham Macnab. He was predeceased by his son Cotton Coulson.
