A resource for litigators, in-house counsel, and arbitrators
Let’s say your arbitration agreement calls for arbitration administered by JAMS under JAMS rules, but the arbitrator is independent and applies AAA rules, over one party’s objection. A new decision from the Fifth Circuit says that is enough to vacate the resulting award.
In Poolre Insurance Corp. v. Organizational Strategies, Inc., __ F.3d__, 2015 WL…
The Third Circuit recently found that the Federal Arbitration Act preempts a Pennsylvania statute that restricts corporate plaintiffs in state and federal court in Pennsylvania to those companies that are registered to do business in Pennsylvania. Generational Equity, LLC v. Schomaker, 2015 WL 708481 (3d Cir. Feb. 19, 2015). In other words, a company…
A lot of interesting arbitration law was made this year, on topics from validity to vacatur, but the banner issue was arbitrator authority. SCOTUS announced that theme for the year with its BG Group decision in March and federal and state courts around the country ran with it. [Warning: this post is a doozy. Get…
Just as SCOTUS held its nose and confirmed an arbitration award it thought stunk in Sutter, the Supreme Court of Alabama has confirmed an arbitration award made after only the claimant presented evidence and grounded in a possible misunderstanding of Alabama law. Tucker v. Ernst & Young, __ So.3d__, 2014 WL 2619860 (Ala. June…
This week the Eighth Circuit confronted an interesting question: if a union member believed he failed a drug test, and therefore agreed his employer could terminate him if he tested positive again, can the arbitrator invalidate that agreement if the union member never actually failed the drug test? The appellate court answered yes, reversing the…
Three decisions came out recently that offer guidance on appealing from arbitration awards. Here are three pearls of arbitration appeal wisdom, one from each case:
1. If you want to appeal from an arbitration, you must have a record. Sounds basic, right? But many parties, either due to confidence they will win in arbitration or …
You may have already heard that SCOTUS affirmed arbitrators’ authority to interpret contractual prerequisites to arbitration last week in BG Group, PLC v. Republic of Argentina. But that is just one of a number of recent decisions from high courts on the deference due arbitrators.
In the BG Group case, the D.C. Circuit had…
Just how hard is it to vacate an arbitration award? The Sixth Circuit recently held that even if the arbitrator reached a result directly contrary to federal precedent, the arbitration award would be upheld. And the Tenth Circuit found that even if the arbitrator based his award on an agreement that does not support the…
In a dispute over whether an arbitrator has authority to grant a video game developer and publisher a perpetual license in the intellectual property as a remedy for the developer’s fraud and breaches of contract, the Fifth Circuit found that the arbitrator’s creative award must be upheld under the Federal Arbitration Act, and set forth…
In a new decision from the First Circuit, which refuses to make any definitive pronouncements about the law on vacating arbitration awards, the court said it assumes “with some confidence” that if an arbitration award directed a party to violate an administrative agency rule, it could be vacated on that basis.
In Bangor Gas Company…