« DOJ Creates Wesite for Veterans and Members of Armed Forces | Main | Bales and Won Pil-Suh on German and European Employment Discrimination Policy »
August 17, 2006
Cert Request Challenges Manifest Disregard Standard for Reviewing Arbitration Awards
ADR World reports that:
National insurance company John Hancock is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the question of whether arbitration awards can be vacated for reasons not explicitly spelled out in the Federal Arbitration Act, particularly for an arbitrator's manifest disregard of the law. In a July petition for a writ of certiorari in John Hancock Life Insurance Co. v. Patten, the company said the U.S. Supreme Court needs to establish the correct standard for analyzing a motion to vacate an award based on that ground, an area of the law it described as being in "complete disarray."
.....................................................The petition was spurred by a ruling [by the Fourth Circuit in Patten v. Signator Insurance Agency et al.] that endorsed vacating an award where an arbitrator's decision was "not reasonable" based on the terms of a contract. The court overturned an award after determining that the arbitrator incorrectly dismissed the case by inferring a one-year statute of limitations from an expired contract, finding that the arbitrator acted in manifest disregard of the law by imposing his own "personal notions of right and wrong."
rb
August 17, 2006 in Arbitration | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341bfae553ef00d834de6d7b69e2
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Cert Request Challenges Manifest Disregard Standard for Reviewing Arbitration Awards:
Comments
I'm really curious about this. I see a very broad trend going back at least to the 1980s in which the Supreme Court has tried to harmonize arbitration law, not only under the FAA but even to the point of incorporating Sec. 301 principles. This case presents a big opportunity to advance that trend. If the Fourth Circuit is right, the FAA limits on judicial review are out the window and any court can throw out an award simply because it strongly disagrees with the result. When lower courts did that in labor arbitration cases, the Supremes shot them down time and again. Logically, it should do the same thing in commercial arbitration, particularly since Congress spelled out grounds for judicial review in the FAA, unlike Sec. 301.
Posted by: Dennis Nolan | Aug 17, 2006 9:34:39 AM
