Arbitration, Mediation & Alternate Dispute Resolution

“Gateway” arbitration issues, including the validity, enforceability, and scope of an arbitration agreement, are presumptively to be decided by a court, rather than by an arbitrator.

The majority of a divided (5-4) SCOTUS recently held that a waiver of “class arbitration” in agreed terms of employment is indeed enforceable. In doing so, the Court advanced the legal analysis of “class arbitration” that was begun several years ago by Justice Antonin Scalia, confirmed that arbitration is fundamentally a creature of contract, and concluded, among other things, that the NLRA was not in conflict with and did not override or displace the FAA.

Lest we forget, many are the arbitrations that are subject to state arbitration law rather than the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”). And one should never underestimate the differences between those regimes. For example, under the FAA, the grounds for vacatur of an award are few and narrowly construed.

Arbitration is a creature of contract, and an arbitrator’s powers are in effect defined by the parties’ arbitration agreement. Paradoxically, although an arbitration agreement can be written (double-spaced) on one side of a cocktail napkin, in some cases it may grant greater authority to an arbitrator than a judge has.

The cost of arbitration, including attorneys’ fees, can be substantial, commensurate with the matters in dispute. Your desire to settle a dispute that is going to arbitration is often as or more substantial. But sometimes your adversary is not willing to settle at your very rational number.

In a proceeding under the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) to determine if a dispute must be arbitrated, a federal district court performs a more limited function than in a plenary civil action.

On April 30, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to review an unpublished Ninth Circuit decision in Varela v. Lamps Plus, Inc., No. 16-56085 (9th Cir. Aug. 3, 2017). See Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela (No. 17-988, U.S. Sup.).

The Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”), 9 U.S.C. §§ 1, et seq., provides the usual means of enforcing an arbitration agreement by compelling a party to arbitrate rather than litigate. Thus, the FAA enables an aggrieved party to seek “an order directing that such arbitration proceed in a manner provided for in such agreement.”

Is there such a thing as an arbitration joke? Here is a test. Two plaintiffs walk into a court, claiming that each was wrongfully terminated by a bank (UBS). The bank moves to compel arbitration by plaintiff one; and it moves to dismiss the judicial claim of plaintiff two because that plaintiff had already brought his claim in an arbitration that he commenced.

An ex parte proceeding in a U.S. court to “recognize,” “enforce,” or “confirm” an arbitration award against a foreign sovereign is improper. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a lengthy and instructive decision to that effect in Mobil Cerro Negro, Ltd. v. Bolivarian Republic of Venez., 863 F.3d 96 (2d. Cir. 2017).

As discussed in an earlier post, obtaining discovery from a non-party to an arbitration often is easier said than done. Depending on the law of the place of arbitration, arbitrators may not be able to compel document production or testimony from a non-party before a hearing on the merits.

Arbitration is a creature of contract. So is the law concerning contracts with an arbitration clause the same as the law concerning any other contract? Almost. One must always bear in mind the “separability” or “independence” of the arbitration agreement -- the autonomy principle.

The drive in the Second Circuit to clarify the rules regarding confirmation and enforcement of various types of arbitration awards continues. The latest addition is the decision in BSH Hausgerate GmbH v. Kamhi, 17 Civ. 5776, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34597 (S.D.N.Y Mar. 2, 2018) (Sweet, J.).

Arbitration is often promoted as faster, cheaper, more predictable, and more controllable than litigation. But to many, arbitration’s promise comes up short on delivery. Why?

The courts undoubtedly have the power to grant provisional remedies in aid of a pending arbitration – including temporary restraining orders, preliminary injunctions, and attachments. As a recent Fifth Circuit decision reminds us, the courts also can grant such remedies in aid of an arbitration that has yet to be commenced.

In a series of articles over the past several months, we asked whether “class arbitration” -- meaning the utilization of the Fed.R.Civ.P. 23 class action protocol in an arbitration proceeding -- is ultimately viable in U.S. jurisprudence. We suggested that it arguably is not, considering the fundamental nature of arbitration.

Under 28 U.S.C. § 1782, “[t]he district court of the district in which a person resides or is found may order him to . . . produce a document for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal . . . .” Courts in the Second Circuit appear to be coming around to accepting that a commercial arbitration can be “a foreign or international tribunal” for these purposes.

Typically, the issue of whether a party is bound by an arbitration agreement is raised in a judicial motion to compel under Section 4 of the Federal Arbitration Act (9 U.S.C. § 4). The issue also may be raised in a judicial application to stay an arbitration, as to which the Section 4 procedure applies as well.

Arbitration is of course a creature of contract, and so a party may not be compelled to arbitrate unless it has agreed, or is deemed to have agreed, to arbitrate a dispute. An offeree may be deemed to have manifested its agreement to an arbitration regime by various sorts of conduct, including in some instances inaction in the face of notice.

Litigators in the U.S. often take for granted the ease with which they can obtain discovery from non-parties in our federal and state courts. One might assume that the “presumption in favor of arbitrability” embodied in the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. §§ 1 et seq. (“FAA”), would have been implemented with, among other things, a statutory grant of subpoena power to arbitrators that is virtually coextensive with that of a federal district court.