In this Part II of our Nuts & Bolt feature on vacating arbitration awards (Part I is here) we briefly look at the first statutory ground for vacating an award under the Federal Arbitration Act: where “[t]he award was procured by corruption, fraud, or undue means. . . .” 9 U.S.C. 10(a)(1). Cases vacating awards on Section 10(a)(1) are rare, probably because the circumstances that would trigger relief are themselves rare.
Section 10(a)(1) is an excellent expression of how Section 10 is designed to provide relief in situations where putting a court’s imprimatur on an award would deprive one of the parties of the benefit of its freely-bargained-for arbitration agreement. It says that corruption, fraud, or undue means in the procurement of an award, whether perpetrated by the arbitrators or a party, spoils the award (assuming the aggrieved party timely moves to vacate). There is nothing particularly controversial about that; we suspect few would contend that parties who agree to arbitrate impliedly consent to arbitration resulting in an award procured through outright chicanery. Continue Reading »
