Pick up any textbook or treatise on arbitration law, and you’ll find the same thing in the chapter on enforcing arbitral awards: courts cannot conduct a merits review of awards. Courts, in other words, do not second guess the conclusions of the arbitrators about law or facts.
Or at least they’re not supposed to do
In most circumstances, the Federal Arbitration Act requires that the losing party move to vacate an arbitration award within three months. However, the Ninth Circuit recently ruled that the three-month timeline can be tolled, especially for something as significant as the chair lying about being a licensed attorney.
In Move, Inc. v. Citigroup Global Markets
The Federal Arbitration Act sets forth only four bases for vacating arbitration awards. See 9 U.S.C. § 10 (a). After SCOTUS’s 2008 decision in Hall Street, at least half of the circuit courts have concluded that those four bases are exclusive, de-legitimizing the creative bases that judges had developed over the years. However, a