Introduction
In this Part III of our Nuts & Bolts feature on vacating arbitration awards (Parts I and II here and here) we consider the second statutory ground for vacating an award under the Federal Arbitration Act: “where there was evident partiality…in the arbitrators…” 9 U.S.C. 10(a)(2). What constitutes “evident partiality” or arbitral bias has been the subject of numerous judicial decisions setting forth various standards and applying them to a wide range of fact patterns. The decisions are not easy to reconcile (some may, indeed, be irreconciliable) and generally the standards are of limited utility in practice. Matters are complicated by judicially-created rules concerning disclosure of potential conflicts of interest and the consequences that may or may not flow from a breach of those rules. To say “evident partiality” is an elusive subject understates the case. Continue Reading »
