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Posts Tagged ‘Uniform Arbitration Act’

The Tenth Tells us Time (Usually) Waits for No One: United Food & Commercial Workers Int’l Union v. King Soopers, Inc.

May 7th, 2014 Appellate Practice, Arbitrability, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Authority of Arbitrators, Awards, Grounds for Vacatur, Judicial Review of Arbitration Awards, Labor Arbitration, Practice and Procedure, State Arbitration Law, State Arbitration Statutes, State Courts, Statute of Limitations, United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on The Tenth Tells us Time (Usually) Waits for No One: United Food & Commercial Workers Int’l Union v. King Soopers, Inc.

Introduction

Arbitration is supposed to be a speedy alternative to litigation, and that is supposed to be true as respects commercial or employment arbitration governed by the Federal Arbitration Act (the “FAA”) and labor arbitration arising under the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C. §§ 151, et. seq., or Section 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act (a/k/a the Labor Management Relations Act (“LMRA”)), 29 U.S.C. § 185. Arbitration awards are generally presumed to be valid, which puts the burden on challengers to establish their invalidity, at least provided the challenging party entered into a valid and enforceable arbitration agreement with the defending party.

Adjudicating a non-frivolous award challenge usually takes time, and if the challenge turns out to be valid, an order vacating the award does not usually resolve the underlying dispute, which, absent a settlement, must be resolved through further ADR or judicial proceedings. Delay is inevitable and delay undermines arbitration’s ability to compete with litigation.

The FAA and most or all state arbitration statutes try to minimize delay by not only by restricting t he scope of judicial review of awards, but also by imposing short limitation periods for vacating awards—for example, three months under the FAA and 90 days under many state arbitration statutes. See 9 U.S.C. § 12; see, e.g., N.Y. Civ. Prac. L.& R. § 7511(a); Fla. Stat. § 682.13(2); Wash. Rev. Code § 7.04A.230(2). Some state statutes impose shorter periods. See, e.g., Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-420(b) (30 days); Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 251, § 12(b) (30 days); but see Cal. Code Civ. P. § 1288 (100 days).

By contrast, a motion or petition to confirm an award is usually subject to a longer statute of limitations. Cases governed by Chapter 1 of the FAA (e.g., domestic arbitrations between domestic parties), for example, are subject to a one-year limitation period. See 9 U.S.C. § 9.

Under the FAA, and presumably under many or most state arbitration statutes, if a party does not bring a timely petition to vacate, and the other moves to confirm after the time period for vacating an award has elapsed, then the challenging party cannot raise grounds for vacatur as defenses to confirmation, even if it does not seek an order vacating the award. See, e.g., Florasynth, Inc. v. Pickholz, 750 F.2d 171, 175-76 (2d Cir. 1984) (FAA); Kutch v. State Farm Mutual Auto. Ins. Co., 960 P.2d 93, 97-98 (Colo. 1998) (Colorado law); but see Lyden v. Bell, 232 A.D.2d 562, 563 (2d Dep’t 1996) (Where a confirmation proceeding “is commenced after the 90-day period, but within the one-year period. . . .[,] a party may, by cross motion to vacate, oppose the petition for confirmation on any of the grounds in CPLR 7511 even though his time to commence a separate proceeding to vacate or modify under CPLR 7511(a) has expired.”) (citations omitted) (New York law); 1000 Second Avenue Corp. v. Pauline Rose Trust, 171 A.D.2d 429, 430 (1st Dep’t 1991) (“an aggrieved party may wait to challenge an award until the opposing party has moved for its confirmation”) (New York law).

In United Food & Commercial Workers Int’l Union v. King Soopers, Inc., No. 12-1409, slip op. (10th Cir. Feb. 28, 2014), the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reminds us that the same rules apply to LMRA Section 301 labor-arbitration-award enforcement actions. Section 301 does not specify limitation periods for vacating arbitration awards, and as a general rule, courts “borrow” the most analogous state statute of limitations. See, e.g., Local 802, Assoc. Mus. of N.Y. v. Parker Meridien Hotel, 145 F.3d at 88-89 (2d Cir. 1998). In King Soopers the Tenth Circuit borrowed Colorado’s 90-day statute of limitations for vacating an award.[1]

King Soopers might be looked at as a refresher course in how important it is to act quickly and decisively when one finds oneself at the wrong end of an arbitration award that might not meet the modest criteria for summary confirmation or enforcement. While roughly nine years elapsed between the date the employee filed the grievance and the date the arbitrator issued the award, the Court, reversing the district court’s decision to the contrary, held (quite correctly) that King Sooper’s just-over-90-day delay in asserting grounds to vacate the award foreclosed it from opposing the union’s suit to enforce the award. Continue Reading »

Belz v. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney: Does a Petition to Vacate an FAA-Governed Award Timely Commenced in State Court Become Time-Barred Simply Because it is Removed to Federal Court?

April 6th, 2014 Arbitration Practice and Procedure, FAA Preemption of State Law, Grounds for Vacatur, Nuts & Bolts: Arbitration, Practice and Procedure, State Arbitration Law, Statute of Limitations, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on Belz v. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney: Does a Petition to Vacate an FAA-Governed Award Timely Commenced in State Court Become Time-Barred Simply Because it is Removed to Federal Court?

Part I

Belz v. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, LLC, No. 3:13-cv-636-J-34 (MCR), slip op. (M.D. Fla. March 5, 2014), is one of those deceptively complex cases. The petitioner, successor trustee of a family trust (the “Trustee”), timely commenced under the Florida Arbitration Code (the “FAC”) in Florida state court  a petition to vacate an arbitration award by filing it within the 90-day period allowed by state law, but did not serve it until a few days after the three-month period required to vacate an award under Section 10 of the Federal Arbitration Act (the “FAA”) had elapsed. Compare Fla. Stat. §§ 682.13(2) & 682.17 with 9 U.S.C. §§ 6, 10 & 12.[1]. The petition requested an order vacating the award under both the FAA and the FAC, which allows service to be effected after expiration of the 90-day filing deadline. See Fla. Stat. §§ 682.13 & 682.17.

The respondent, a well-known securities broker-dealer (the “Broker-Dealer”), removed the case to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida based on the court’s diversity jurisdiction. In federal court the Broker-Dealer argued that the petition was time-barred because service was not effected within the FAA Section 12’s three-month deadline. The district court agreed and dismissed the petition as time-barred.

The district court apparently thought that, once a court determines that an arbitration agreement falls within the scope of the FAA, all of its provisions—whether substantive, procedural or a combination of the two—supersede their state law counterparts if they conflict in any way with them, irrespective of whether the conflict frustrates the purposes and objectives of the FAA. The court also seems to have thought that the state of Florida could not, independently from the FAA, declare an arbitration agreement falling under the FAA to be valid, irrevocable and enforceable under Florida substantive arbitration law, and enforce that arbitration agreement through Florida’s own statutory, summary procedures that are, for the most part, identical to those provided by the FAA, and, in any event, do not frustrate the purposes and objectives of the FAA.

Belz is deceptively complex because at first glance the case seems relatively straightforward: (a) the FAA applied to the arbitration agreement and award; (b) the FAA’s three-month statute of limitations for vacating an award is not tolled until service is effected; (c) the court determined service was not timely under the FAA; (d) the FAC’s statute of limitations, which requires only that an application for vacatur be filed within the 90-day period, did not apply because the FAA applied; and (d) therefore, the application to vacate was untimely.

But in Belz there was an “elephant in the room,” albeit one well-camouflaged by its inherent complexity: federalism—a principle reflected in the text of the FAA, in the Continue Reading »