I have to confess something: I just returned from sunny California where I attended an excellent arbitrator training course put on by the American Arbitration Association and run by Dana Welch and Michael Powell! If you have an opportunity to take a course from either of them, I highly recommend it.
And, as it so
Okay, folks, we are still combating the summer slide here. Today’s refresher rule is this: If an arbitrator fails to disclose a substantial relationship, the resulting award can be vacated under 9 U.S. C. 10 (a)(2). But, not all relationships are substantial, as the cases today make clear.
Beginning in my backyard, the appellant in
The Supreme Court of Hawaii ruled recently that if a neutral arbitrator fails to meet disclosure requirements, it constitutes “evident partiality” as a matter of law, and requires the vacatur of the arbitrator’s award. Furthermore, Hawaii interpreted its disclosure requirements broadly, and in this case found an arbitrator’s failure to disclose the “concrete possibility” of
Today we take a close look at that rare creature: an opinion finding sufficient basis under the FAA to vacate an arbitration award. In Tenaska Energy Inc. v. Ponderosa Pine Energy, LLC, __S.W.3d __, 2014 WL 2139215 (Tex. May 23, 2014), the Supreme Court of Texas found an arbitrator had shown “evident partiality” due
One of the very few ways to show evident partiality by an arbitrator is to show the arbitrator had financial ties to a party or witness in the proceeding, another is to show the arbitrator prejudiced a party by reversing a procedural or evidentiary ruling during the hearing. The Sixth Circuit found a Michigan arbitrator
The Third Circuit refused to vacate an arbitrator’s award, despite allegations that she failed to disclose contributions the defendant’s parent company had made to her judicial campaign and failed to disclose that she co-taught a seminar with in-house counsel for the defendant’s parent company. Freeman v. Pittsburgh Glass Works, LLC, __ F.3d __, 2013 WL
The Fifth Circuit has issued a harsh reminder that in order to preserve issues of arbitrator bias for appeal, the bias must have been raised before the arbitration award was issued.
In Dealer Computer Servs. v. Michael Motor Co., 2012 WL 3317809 (5th Cir. Aug. 14, 2012), one party (DCS) received a unanimous and favorable
It must be near the end of the clerk year, because courts are going gangbusters issuing opinions. Today, a roundup of three arbitration decisions from Southern states. Notably, Louisiana makes it tough for lawyers to enforce arbitration agreements with their clients.
After prominently noting that the lower court rulings were “eminently reasonable, logical and just,”