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Posts Tagged ‘U.S. Supreme Court’

All Eyes on Americo. . . .SCOTUS Expected to Rule on Petition for Certiorari at Upcoming May 14, 2015 Conference

May 12th, 2015 American Arbitration Association, Appellate Practice, Arbitrability, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration as a Matter of Consent, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Arbitration Provider Rules, Arbitrator Selection and Qualification Provisions, Awards, Confirmation of Awards, Contract Interpretation, Evident Partiality, Judicial Review of Arbitration Awards, State Courts Comments Off on All Eyes on Americo. . . .SCOTUS Expected to Rule on Petition for Certiorari at Upcoming May 14, 2015 Conference

yay-677327-digitalOn March 28, 2015 we reported (here) that the U.S. Supreme Court had asked for a response to the petition for certiorari in Americo Life, Inc. v. Myer, 440 S.W.3d 18 (Tex. 2014). In Americo the Texas Supreme Court held that an arbitration award had to be vacated because it was made by a panel not constituted according to the parties’ agreement. The parties’ agreement, among other things, incorporated the American Arbitration Association (the “AAA”)’s rules, which at the time the parties entered into the contract followed the traditional, industry arbitration principle that party-appointed arbitrators may be partial, under the control of the appointing party or both. But by the time the dispute arose the AAA Rules had been amended to provide that the parties are presumed to intend that appointed arbitrators must be neutral.

Five Justices of the nine-member Court determined that the parties had agreed that party-appointed arbitrators need not be impartial, only independent. Because the AAA had, contrary to the parties’ agreement, disqualified the challenging party’s first-choice arbitrator on partiality grounds, the panel that rendered the award was not properly constituted and thus exceeded its powers. See 440 S.W.3d at 25. (Copies of our Americo posts are here and here.)

yay-34842-e1424841353823The losing party is requesting Supreme  Court review to determine whether the Texas Supreme Court should have deferred to the AAA’s decision on disqualification rather than independently determining whether the parties intended to require party-appointed arbitrators to be neutral. The petition argues that there is a split in the circuits on the issue.

At this week’s May 14, 2015 conference, the Court will presumably decide whether or not to grant certiorari.

In our March 28, 2015 post (here) we argued  that Americo‘s unique facts make it poor candidate for certiorari. At the time the parties agreed to arbitrate, the AAA rules “provided that ‘[u]nless the parties agree otherwise, an arbitrator selected unilaterally by one party is a party-appointed arbitrator and not subject to disqualification pursuant to Section 19.'” 440 S.W.3d at 23 (quoting AAA Commercial Rule § 12 (1996)). Section 19 permitted the AAA to disqualify neutral arbitrators for partiality, but, under Section 12, absent an agreement to the contrary, party-appointed arbitrators were not subject to disqualification under Rule 19. When the AAA Rules were amended to reverse the traditional presumption about partiality of party-appointed arbitrators, the Rules were also amended to authorize the AAA to determine whether party-appointed arbitrators were neutral.

yay-8590418-digitalThis is one of those (relatively rare) cases where a question of arbitrability—that is, whether the parties agreed to delegate to the AAA the authority to make a final and binding determination on whether a party-appointed arbitrator may be disqualified—is intertwined so inextricably with the merits of the dispute alleged to be arbitrable that, for all intents and purposes, the arbitrability and merits questions are identical. In other words, the AAA’s authority to disqualify turns on whether the parties agreed to neutral or non-neutral party-appointed arbitrators–the precise issue the petition claims the AAA should itself decide. In situations like these, the court cannot abdicate its duty to determine arbitrability, even if that means deciding some or all of the disputes that are alleged to be arbitrable. See, generally, Litton Financial Printing Div. v. National Labor Relations Board, 501 U.S. 190, 208-09 (1991).

Of course, the Supreme Court may believe otherwise, or may have other reasons for wanting  to grant certiorari.  But in any event, we’ll probably know by Monday, May 18, 2015 whether the Court will take the case.

 

Photo Acknowledgements:

All photos used in the text portion of this post are licensed from Yay Images and are subject to copyright protection under applicable law. Text has been added to images 1 and 3 (counting from top to bottom). Hover your mouse pointer over any image to view the Yay Images abbreviation of the photographer’s name.

SCA v. Armstrong: Anatomy of the Lance Armstrong Arbitration Award—Part III.B.2: Panel’s Authority to Decide the SCA Parties’ Sanctions Claims

April 2nd, 2015 Arbitrability, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Attorney Fees and Sanctions, Authority of Arbitrators, Awards, Contract Interpretation, Functus Officio, Judicial Review of Arbitration Awards, Practice and Procedure, State Arbitration Law, State Arbitration Statutes, State Courts, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on SCA v. Armstrong: Anatomy of the Lance Armstrong Arbitration Award—Part III.B.2: Panel’s Authority to Decide the SCA Parties’ Sanctions Claims

Part III.B.2

Panel’s Analysis of the Merits of the Arbitrability Issue (Panel Issue No. 1)

Now that we’ve discussed why we think the Court will review the arbitrator’s threshold arbitrability decision de novo, let’s take a closer look at the Panel’s analysis of the arbitrability issue and whether the Texas state courts will conclude that the Panel had the jurisdiction to decide the SCA Parties’ sanctions claims.

yay-15706730-digitalThe procedural posture of  the jurisdictional issue before the Panel is unusual because the Panel, with the parties’ consent, had previously made a partial final award expressing its views on jurisdiction. The intent was to permit expedited judicial review of the issue. The Panel’s 2-1 ruling finding jurisdiction was confirmed by the trial court, which means that the trial court will almost certainly reject Armstrong’s putative challenge to the Panel’s jurisdiction.

The Armstrong Parties’ appeal to the intermediate court of appeals was dismissed for lack of appellate jurisdiction, presumably because the intermediate court of appeals concluded that the trial court’s order confirming the partial final award was not a final order or judgment from which an appeal could be taken. The Armstrong Parties sought temporary relief and mandamus review in the Texas Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court denied those requests.

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Issue No. 1 is simply whether the parties agreed  to submit to arbitration the SCA Parties’ claims against Armstrong relating to Armstrong’s alleged procurement of the consent award through perjury, fraud and other deceptive means. The key question is whether the SCA Parties’ disputes fell within the broad scope of the parties’ arbitration agreement. And the answer is driven in large part by the presumption in favor of arbitration, under which ambiguities about the scope of an arbitration agreement are resolved in favor of arbitration.

By comparison, recall that the answer to the question who decides arbitrability questions was driven by a presumption against arbitration: courts presume that arbitrability questions are for the court to decide unless the parties “clearly and unmistakably” agree to delegate those questions to the arbitrators. The whole point of agreeing to arbitrate is to have arbitrators decide disputes about the merits, and so when the question is whether the parties empowered the arbitrators to decide the merits of a party’s claim for relief, courts presume those questions are for the arbitrators to decide.

The presumption of arbitrability applies to case governed by the Federal Arbitration Act as well as cases falling under the Texas General Arbitration Act. It provides that ambiguities in the scope of an arbitration agreement are to be resolved in favor of arbitration. See, e.g., Moses H. Cone Mem. Hosp. v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 24-25 (1983); Mitsubishi Motors v. Soler Chrysler Plymouth, 473 U.S. 614, 626 (1985); G.T. Leach Builders, LLC v. Sapphire V.P. LP, No. 130497, at *21-22 & nn. 14 & 16 (Tex. Mar. 20, 2015); Branch Law Firm, L.L.P. v. Osborn, 447 S.W.3d 390, 394-98 & n.10 (Tex. App. 14 Dist. 2014). That means that if the scope provision of an arbitration agreement is susceptible to more than one interpretation, and at least one of those interpretations would require the dispute to be submitted to arbitration, then the court, as a matter of law, must find that the parties agreed to submit the dispute to arbitration. Continue Reading »

U.S. Supreme Court Grants Certiorari in Another Class Arbitration Case: Can the Federal Arbitration Act Spare DIRECTV an Extended Stay in Class-Arbitration-Waiver Purgatory?

March 31st, 2015 Appellate Practice, Arbitrability, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, California State Courts, Choice-of-Law Provisions, Class Action Arbitration, Class Action Waivers, Contract Interpretation, FAA Preemption of State Law, Practice and Procedure, State Courts, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on U.S. Supreme Court Grants Certiorari in Another Class Arbitration Case: Can the Federal Arbitration Act Spare DIRECTV an Extended Stay in Class-Arbitration-Waiver Purgatory?

On March 23, 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia, No. 14-462. If decided on its merits, the case will be by our count the fifth U.S. Supreme Court decision concerning class arbitration decided on its merits during the period 2010 forward.

yay-1341284-digitalImburgia is a decision by the California Court of Appeals, Second District, Division One of which the California Supreme Court denied review. Like many other Federal Arbitration Act cases, it presents some interesting vertical conflict of law questions, but the California Court of Appeals does not appear to have resolved them in the way the U.S. Supreme Court presumably intended them to be resolved under the Volt and Mastrobuono lines of cases. 

The case centers  on a class-action waiver non-severability provision included in a consumer contract DIRECTV entered into in 2007, about four years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Concepcion that the Federal Arbitration Act preempted California’s Discover Bank rule. The Discover Bank rule provides that class action waivers are unenforceable in litigation or arbitration proceedings. See, generally, AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 131 S.Ct. 1740, 1753 (2011).

yay-3535433-digitalBefore Concepcion not only did the California state courts hold that the Federal Arbitration Act did not preempt the Discover Bank rule, but so did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Thus, at the time, the risk companies like DIRECTV and others with consumer class arbitration exposure had was that applicable state law would not only ban class arbitration waivers, but applicable federal law would permit that to happen.

So companies like DIRECTV and others built into their arbitration agreements a fail-safe mechanism under which the entire arbitration agreement would be rendered uneneforceable if state law rendered the class arbitration waiver unenforceable. In other words, the companies understandably viewed class action litigation to be a more favorable alternative than class arbitration if forced to choose between the two. Continue Reading »

SCA v. Armstrong: Anatomy of the Lance Armstrong Arbitration Award—Part III.B.1: Panel Issue No. 1: the Panel’s Authority to Decide the SCA Parties’ Sanctions Claims

March 29th, 2015 Arbitrability, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration as a Matter of Consent, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Attorney Fees and Sanctions, Authority of Arbitrators, Awards, Confirmation of Awards, Contract Interpretation, Grounds for Vacatur, Practice and Procedure, State Courts, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on SCA v. Armstrong: Anatomy of the Lance Armstrong Arbitration Award—Part III.B.1: Panel Issue No. 1: the Panel’s Authority to Decide the SCA Parties’ Sanctions Claims

Part III.B.1

Panel Issue No. 1: the Armstrong Panel’s Authority to Decide the SCA Parties’ Sanctions Claims

Introduction

Part III.A of our Lance Armstrong Arbitration Award series identified (a) the categories of issues (the “Issue Categories”) that a court can address on a motion to vacate an arbitration award on the ground the arbitrators exceeded their powers (the “Issue Categories”); and (a) the four specific issues that the Panel addressed in its award (the “Panel Issues”).

Panel Issue No. 1 was, as phrased by the arbitrators: “Does this Arbitration Tribunal have the jurisdiction or authority to decide and resolve the existing disputes between the named parties?” That issue falls into Issue Category No. 1: Issues concerning whether the parties delegated to the arbitrators—or were required to delegate to the arbitrators—the power to decide particular disputes.

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Whether or not the Panel had the authority to decide the SCA Parties’ claims against  Armstrong and Tailwind (the “Armstrong Parties”) depends on whether at least one 0f the parties requested the arbitrators to adjudicate those claims; and the other party either: (a) expressly or impliedly consented to the arbitrators deciding the dispute; or (b) objected to the request, but the claims were within the scope of the parties’ written pre- or post-dispute arbitration agreement.   Disputes what issues the parties submitted—or were required to be submit—to arbitration present questions of arbitrability. See, e.g., Howsam v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., 537 U.S. 79, 83-86 (2002); First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 543 U.S. 938, 942-45 (1995).

Relationship Between Arbitrability and the Post-Award Standard of Judicial Review

Ordinarily, questions of arbitrability are— in the allocation-of-decision-making-power scheme of things—for the court to decide, unless the parties have clearly and unmistakably agreed to delegate them to arbitrators. See, e.g., First Options, 543 U.S. at 944-45. Under a typical broadly-worded pre-dispute arbitration agreement, the vast majority of disputes that may arise between the parties—including disputes about arbitration procedure—are presumptively arbitrable, that is, they are subject to arbitration unless the parties clearly a nd unmistakably exclude them from arbitration. But when a dispute presents a question of arbitrability, then it is presumptively for the court to decide, that is, they are not subject to arbitration unless the parties clearly and unmistakably include them within the universe of disputes that must be submitted to arbitration.

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Where as here, an arbitrability issue arises at the award enforcement (or back-end) stage of the proceedings—rather than the pre-arbitration,  arbitration-agreement-enforcement (or front-end) stage (i.e., on a motion to compel arbitration or stay litigation)—then whether or not an issue is a question of arbitrability affects the standard of review. The standard of review is, in essence, the degree of deference to  which a court pays the arbitrators’ decisions on matters that are material to applications to confirm, vacate or modify arbitration awards. Continue Reading »

United States Supreme Court Requests Response to Petition for Certiorari in Texas Party-Appointed Arbitrator Qualification Case

March 28th, 2015 American Arbitration Association, Appellate Practice, Arbitrability, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Arbitration Provider Rules, Arbitrator Selection and Qualification Provisions, Authority of Arbitrators, Awards, Contract Interpretation, Evident Partiality, Grounds for Vacatur, Judicial Review of Arbitration Awards, State Arbitration Law, State Courts, Texas Supreme Court, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on United States Supreme Court Requests Response to Petition for Certiorari in Texas Party-Appointed Arbitrator Qualification Case

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On June 20, 2014 the Texas Supreme Court held in Americo Life, Inc. v. Myer, 440 S.W.3d 18 (Tex. 2014), that an arbitration award had to be vacated because it was made by a panel not constituted according to the parties’ agreement. The parties’ agreement, among other things, incorporated the American Arbitration Association (the “AAA”)’s rules, which at the time the parties entered into the contract followed the traditional, industry arbitration principle that party-appointed arbitrators may be partial, under the control of the appointing party or both. But by the time the dispute arose the AAA Rules had been amended to provide that the parties are presumed to intend that appointed arbitrators must be neutral.

Five Justices of the nine-member Court determined that the parties had agreed that party-appointed arbitrators need not be impartial, only independent. Because the AAA had, contrary to the parties’ agreement, disqualified the challenging party’s first-choice arbitrator on partiality grounds, the panel that rendered the award was not properly constituted and thus exceeded its powers. See 440 S.W.3d at 25. (Copies of our Americo posts are here and here.)

The losing party has petitioned the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, arguing that the Court should determine whether the Court should have deferred to the AAA’s decision on disqualification rather than independently determining whether the parties intended to require party-appointed arbitrators to be neutral. Continue Reading »

Third Circuit Opalinski Class Arbitration Arbitrability Case Cert. Petition Set for Conference

February 25th, 2015 Appellate Practice, Arbitrability, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration as a Matter of Consent, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Authority of Arbitrators, Class Action Arbitration, Class Action Waivers, Consolidation of Arbitration Proceedings, Drafting Arbitration Agreements, Judicial Review of Arbitration Awards, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on Third Circuit Opalinski Class Arbitration Arbitrability Case Cert. Petition Set for Conference

yay-10417208Classarb-e14248919879081 - CopyOn August 28, 2014 we posted an article discussing the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit’s decision in Opalinski v. Robert Half Int’l Inc., 761 F.3d 326 (3rd Cir. 2014), which held that the question of consent to class arbitration was one of arbitrability. Prior to Opalinski the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Crockett, 734 F.3d 594 (6th Cir. 2013), “that the question whether an arbitration agreement permits classwide arbitration is a gateway matter, which is reserved for judicial determination unless the parties clearly and unmistakably provide otherwise.” 734 F.2d at 599 (quotation and citation omitted).

 

 

yay-10343058Arbitrability-e1424891774286Opalinski “join[ed] the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in holding that the availability of class arbitration” is a substantive gateway question rather than a procedural one[,]” and thus “is a question of arbitrability.” 761 F.3d at 335. The Third Circuit’s decision turned on “the critical differences between individual and class arbitration and the significant consequences of that determination for both [a] whose claims are subject to arbitration[;] and [b] the type of controversy to be arbitrated.” Id. (emphasis and bracketed letters added). Where, as in Opalinski, the arbitration agreement did not “mention” class arbitration, the Court “believ[ed] the parties would have expected a court, not an arbitrator, to determine the availability of class arbitration[,]” and that was “especially so given the critical differences between individual and class arbitration and the significant consequences” of the class-arbitration-consent determination as respects “whose claims are subject to arbitration and the type of controversy to be arbitrated.” 761 F.3d at 335.

 

yay-34842-e1424891828235As we explained in our prior post, both Opalinski and Reed Elsevier followed on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter, 133 S. Ct. 2064 (2013), which in footnote pointed out that the award-challenger in Oxford had unreservedly submitted to the arbitrator the issue of whether class arbitration consent was one of arbitrability, but that the case before it would have been “different” had Oxford “argued below that the availability of class-arbitration is a so-called ‘question of arbitrability.’” 133 S. Ct. at 2068 n.2. The Oxford Court said that Stolt-Nielsen, S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U.S. 662, 680 (2010) “made clear that this Court has not yet decided” whether class-arbitration-consent presents a question of arbitrability. But “Oxford agreed that the arbitrator should determine whether its contract with Sutter authorized class procedures[,]” and “Oxford submitted that issue to arbitrator not once, but twice and the second time after Stolt-Nielsen flagged that it might be a question of arbitrability.” 133 S. Ct. at 2068 n.2. (emphasis added)

 

yay-4295955StandardReview-e1424891877565Had Oxford opted to request the Supreme Court to determine whether class-arbitration consent presented a question of arbitrability, and had the Court determined that it was such a question, then the Court would have determined “independently, that is, without deferring to the arbitrator’s decision” whether the parties consented to class arbitration. See BG Group plc v. Republic of Argentina, No. 12-138, slip op. at 6 (U.S. March 5, 2014); First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 543 U.S. 938, 942 (1995). And we doubt that a majority of the Supreme Court would have upheld the Oxford award had it reviewed the class-arbitration-consent determination de novo. See, e.g., Oxford, 133 S. Ct. at 2071 (Alito, J., concurring) (“If we were reviewing the arbitrator’s interpretation of the contract de novo, we would have little trouble concluding that he improperly inferred “[a]n implicit agreement to authorize class-action arbitration.  .  .  from the fact of the parties’ agreement to arbitrate.”) (quoting Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U.S. at 685).

 

yay-14148680-digital-e1424891905695 - CopyAfter the Third Circuit denied rehearing en banc, the Opalinsky parties petitioned for certiorari. The petition has been distributed and is set to be considered at the Supreme Court’s March 6, 2015 conference. See Docket, Opalinski v. Robert Half Int’l Inc., No. 14-625.

The United States Supreme Court regularly holds private conferences at which it, among other things, votes on whether to grant particular petitions for certiorari. Four votes is required to grant a petition for cert. The vast majority of the many cert. petitions the Court considers considers are denied. When the Supreme Court grants a petition, it simply means that it has agreed to hear the case, which will then be fully briefed, and in most cases, orally argued. Neither the grant or denial of a petition for certiorari suggests approval or disapproval with the lower court’s decision on the merits.

It will be interesting to see if the U.S. Supreme Court is will agree to hear and determine the important arbitrability question addressed in Opalinski. If it does the Court will have an opportunity to provide some needed, uniform guidance on it, and perhaps even some indirect guidance on the related issue of whether, and if so, under what circumstances, consent to consolidated arbitration may present a question of arbitrability.

Arbitration and Mediation FAQs: Can I Appeal an Arbitration Award in Court?

May 21st, 2014 Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration and Mediation FAQs, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Awards, Drafting Arbitration Agreements, Grounds for Vacatur, Nuts & Bolts, Nuts & Bolts: Arbitration, Practice and Procedure Comments Off on Arbitration and Mediation FAQs: Can I Appeal an Arbitration Award in Court?

Introduction

When a party is on the wrong end of an arbitration award that he, she or it thinks is fundamentally unfair, tainted by impropriety, or disconnected from the agreement the arbitrator was supposed to interpret and apply, the first question that comes to mind is whether there might be some form of recourse available. In court,  the usual avenue of relief from an adverse judgment or order is an appeal.

Can a losing party to an arbitration award governed by the Federal Arbitration Act (the “FAA”) appeal it in court? Since private arbitration is an alternative to public, government-sponsored court litigation, since the court system plays an important role in enforcing arbitration agreements, since both arbitration and court litigation share at least some of the same attributes and since in the U.S. procedural due process and the primacy of the rule of law are as dear to us as baseball and apple pie, it is natural to assume that one should be able to appeal an adverse arbitration award.

But one cannot—in any meaningful sense of the word—“appeal” an arbitration award to a court. In court litigation an appeal involves judicial review by an appellate court under which a panel of judges reviews trial-court rulings on questions of law independently—that is, as if the appellate court were deciding the question for itself in the first instance. The appellate court reviews the trial court’s findings of fact on a “clearly erroneous” or “clear error” standard of review, that is, paying a certain degree of deference to the finder of fact (the jury or trial judge). While appellate review thus does not involve a retrial on the merits, it is broad and searching, particularly where outcomes turn solely on questions of law.

The FAA does not authorize courts to review arbitration awards under an appellate standard of review, even if the parties consent to a court applying such a standard. Parties can agree before or after a dispute arises to an arbitration procedure that empowers another arbitrator or panel of arbitrators to review an award under an appellate or some other standard of review, but arbitration awards are subject to very limited and deferential review by courts and then only on a few narrow grounds.

The FAA Award-Enforcement Process

The FAA award enforcement process permits either party to make an application to vacate, modify or correct an award, or an application to “confirm” it, that is, enter judgment on it. Since the deadline for applying to vacate, modify or correct an award is considerably shorter than that for confirming an award, in many cases, parties who are seeking relief from the award make the initial application. If a putative challenging party does not timely seek relief, and the other party seeks confirmation after the expiration of the deadline for making an application to vacate, modify or correct the award, then the challenging party is time-barred from asserting grounds for vacatur or modification, even simply as affirmative defenses to confirmation. (See, e.g., L. Reins. & Arb. Law Forum post here.)

Let’s assume a party makes a timely motion to vacate an award. What will likely then happen is the other party will cross-move to confirm the award. The burden on the party seeking confirmation is pretty modest. Generally the party moving to confirm will need to show that the parties: (a) agreed to arbitrate; (b) consented to entry of judgment on the award; (c) appointed an arbitrator or panel of arbitrators; and (d) submitted the dispute to the arbitrators, who issued the award. The award is presumed valid and the court does not review its outcome or substance.

Once the modest prerequisites for confirmation have been established by a properly supported petition or motion to confirm an award, then the court “must grant” confirmation “unless the award is vacated, modified or corrected” under FAA Sections 10 or 11. 9 U.S.C. § 9. Thus, apart from those relatively rare cases where a party can show that the parties never agreed to arbitrate at all (and that the challenging party did not waive that defense), or perhaps never even impliedly consented to entry of judgment on the award, the only grounds on which the losing party can oppose confirmation are those set forth in Section 10 and 11.

The only exception might be if the award interprets the contract in a way that causes it to violate a well-defined and explicit public policy, or if the remedy the arbitrator awards violates the criminal law or requires one of the parties to do so. For example, one would not expect a court to enter judgment on an award that purported to authorize the prevailing party to inflict bodily harm on the losing party or vice-versa. That principle is simply an application of the contract-law rule that courts will not enforce contracts that violate public policy. See, generally, W. R. Grace & Co. v. Rubber Workers, 461 U.S. 757, 766 (1983); United Food & Commercial Workers Int’l Union v. King Soopers, 743 F.3d 1310, 1315 (10th Cir. 2014).

Continue Reading »

Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter—SCOTUS Reaffirms FAA Section 10(a)(4) Manifest Disregard of the Agreement Outcome Review Standard and Elaborates on Its Scope: Part II.C

August 19th, 2013 Arbitrability, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Authority of Arbitrators, Awards, Class Action Arbitration, Class Action Waivers, Consolidation of Arbitration Proceedings, Contract Interpretation, Grounds for Vacatur, Judicial Review of Arbitration Awards, Practice and Procedure, Unconscionability, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter—SCOTUS Reaffirms FAA Section 10(a)(4) Manifest Disregard of the Agreement Outcome Review Standard and Elaborates on Its Scope: Part II.C

Part II.C

Does Oxford Portend Judicial Reconsideration of

Whether Class-Arbitration Consent is a Question of Arbitrability?      

In Stolt-Nielsen and Oxford the parties voluntarily submitted the class-arbitration-consent question to arbitrators because a four-Justice plurality ruled in Green Tree Financial Corp. v. Bazzle, 539 U.S. 444 (2003), that the class-arbitration-consent issue was not a question of arbitrability for the court to decide.   While “courts assume that the parties intended courts, not arbitrators” to decide certain “gateway matters, such as whether the parties have a valid arbitration agreement at all or whether a concededly binding arbitration clause applies to a certain type of controversy,” the Court found that the issue did not fall into “this narrow exception.” 539 U.S. at 452 (citations omitted).  According to the Court, “the relevant question . . . is what kind of arbitration proceeding the parties agreed to:”

That question does not concern a state statute or judicial procedures. It concerns contract interpretation and arbitration procedures. Arbitrators are well situated to answer that question. Given these considerations, along with the arbitration contracts’ sweeping language concerning the scope of the questions committed to arbitration, this matter of contract interpretation should be for the arbitrator, not the courts, to decide.

539 U.S. at 452-53 (citations omitted).

Bazzle was well received by the lower courts, and even though it was only a plurality opinion, many courts, parties and practitioners apparently thought that the arbitrability of consent-to-class-arbitration was a foregone conclusion after Bazzle even though the plurality’s rationale was endorsed by only four justices – a hat-tip to Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s clearly and persuasively written plurality opinion. Some also apparently thought that Associate Justice John Paul Stevens’ concurring opinion was, for all intents and purposes, an endorsement of the plurality’s rationale, and that accordingly, Bazzle established precedent binding on the lower courts.

In 2003, prompted in part by Bazzle, the American Arbitration Association promulgated its Supplementary Rules for Class Arbitrations, Rule 3 of which directs the arbitrator or panel to “determine as a threshold matter, in a reasoned, partial, final award on the construction of the arbitration clause, whether the applicable arbitration clause permits the arbitration to proceed on behalf of or against a class.  .  .  .”  AAA Supplementary Rules, Rule 3.  The “Clause Construction” awards in Stolt-Nielsen and Oxford were made under Rule 3 of the AAA Supplementary Rules.

In light of Bazzle and the AAA Supplementary Rules, class-arbitration-consent-related disputes in cases where the relevant arbitration agreements did not expressly prohibit class arbitration – e.g., cases not involving class-arbitration waivers – were generally submitted to arbitration, usually pursuant to the AAA Supplementary Rules.  Most of the class-arbitration-related litigation concerned challenges to class arbitration waivers, rather than the arbitrability of class-arbitration-consent-related issues.

But Stolt-Nielsen explained that Bazzle did not establish binding precedent on any issue—including class-arbitration-consent arbitrability—because it “did not yield a majority decision.  .  .  .” See Stolt-Nielsen, 130 S. Ct. at 1772.  The Court said that “[u]nfortunately the opinions in Bazzle appear to have baffled the parties in this case at the time of the arbitration proceeding[,]” because “[f]or one thing, the parties appear to have believed that the judgment in Bazzle requires an arbitrator, not a court, to decide whether a contract permits class arbitration.”  Stolt-Nielsen, 130 S. Ct. at 1772 (citation omitted).  The Court did “not revisit that [allocation of decision-making power] question [in Stolt-Nielsen] because the parties’ supplemental agreement expressly assigned this issue to the arbitration panel, and no party argues that this assignment was impermissible.”  Id.

The Court underscored that same point in Oxford, noting that it “would face a different issue if Oxford had argued below that the availability of class arbitration is a so-called ‘question of arbitrability,’” an issue “Stolt-Nielsen made clear that [the Supreme Court] has not yet decided.  .  .  .”  Oxford, Slip op. at 4 n.2.    But Oxford gave the Court “no opportunity to do so because Oxford agreed that the arbitrator should determine whether its contract with Sutter authorized class procedures.”  Id Oxford submitted the issue to arbitration “not once but twice—and the second time after Stolt-Nielsen flagged that it might be a question of arbitrability.”  Id. Continue Reading »