Challenges to the Arbitral Award - Part 1, Chapter 7 - AAA Yearbook on Arbitration and the Law - 23rd Edition
About the Editors:
Stephen K. Huber is Professor Emeritus at the University of Houston Law Center, and has served as a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Rice University (Political Science), Pepperdine Law School (Dispute Resolution Program), and the University of East Africa (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania). He has degrees in law from the University of Chicago and Yale University, and a B.A. from Earlham College.
Professor Huber's teaching and scholarly interest have centered on business and commerce (Contracts), and the regulation thereof (Administrative Law, Regulation of Financial Intermediaries). Over the last decade, his writings have focused on private binding dispute resolution proceedings (Arbitration). Teaching materials include: Stephen K. Huber & Maureen A. Weston, Arbitration: Cases and Materials (3d ed. LexisNexis 2011); Wendy Trachte-Huber & Stephen K. Huber, Mediation and Negotiation: Reaching Agreement in Law and Business (2d ed. LexisNexis 2007). Mr. Huber is a member of the State Bar of Texas, and the editor of Alternative Resolutions, the quarterly journal of the Dispute Resolution Section. He is the author of numerous publications relating to arbitration.
Ben H. Sheppard, Jr. is a Distinguished Lecturer and Director of the A.A. White Dispute Resolution Center at the University of Houston Law Center. From 1969 through 2005 he practiced at Vinson & Elkins L.L.P. where he was a partner and co-chair of the firm's international dispute resolution practice. His practice focused on litigation and arbitration, both as counsel and as arbitrator. He has served in international and domestic arbitrations as sole arbitrator, tribunal chair, party-appointed arbitrator and on tripartite tribunals selected from institutional rosters.
He was chair of AAA/ICDR task force that promulgated the 2006 amendment to the ICDR International Arbitration Rules that established a pre-arbitral emergency arbitrator procedure. He was the author of the report and recommendation to the ABA House of Delegates in support of the 2004 Revision to the AAA/ABA Code of Ethics for Arbitrators in Commercial Disputes. He chaired one of the two working groups that promulgated the CPR Protocol on Disclosure of Documents and Presentation of Witnesses in Commercial Arbitration. He is a past chair of the Disputes Division of the ABA Section of International Law and for five years served as editor-in-chief of The International Arbitration News. He is co-editor, with Lawrence W. Newman, and a contributing author to Take the Witness: Cross-Examination in International Arbitration (Juris 2010).
He graduated with high honors from the University of Texas School of Law in 1968, and was law clerk to the Honorable Homer Thornberry, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1968 to 1969.
Originally from: AAA Yearbook on Arbitration and the Law - 23rd Edition
7.01 Statutory Deadlines for Submission of Application to Vacate or Modify Award
M3 Healthcare Solutions v. Family Practice Assoc., P.A., 996 A.2d 1279 (Del. 2010)
A timely answer objecting to a motion to confirm an arbitration award may be construed as a timely application for vacatur or modification within the Uniform Arbitration Act.
Family Practice Associates (FPA) initiated an arbitration proceeding against M3, a medical billing company. The arbitrator issued an award in favor of FPA. FPA then filed a motion to confirm the award in the trial court. M3 filed a timely answer, objecting to confirmation of the award on various non-statutory grounds and requesting vacatur or modification of the award. FPA then filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that M3 had failed to file a timely motion or application to vacate or modify within the 90-day period required by the Uniform Arbitration Act (UAA). The trial court granted FPA’s motion for summary judgment, finding that M3’s answer objecting to confirmation of the award did not constitute a proper application for vacatur or modification under the UAA.
On appeal to the Supreme Court of Delaware, M3 argued that its answer to FPA’s motion to confirm was sufficient to constitute an application for vacatur under the UAA. The court, noting Delaware’s liberal pleading standard, agreed. M3 timely notified FPA of its intention to seek vacatur or modification by raising the filing an answer within the required 90-day period under the UAA. The court found the fact that M3 did not raise its objections to confirmation in formal, separate motion insufficient to entitle FPA to summary judgment. Therefore, the trial court erred in granting FPA’s motion for summary judgment; it should have instead considered M3’s timely answer containing objections to confirmation as a constructive application for modification or vacautr under the UAA.
Chapter 7
Challenges to the Arbitral Award
7.01 Statutory Deadlines for Submission of Application to Vacate or Modify Award
7.02 Contractual Expansion of Grounds of Judicial Review
7.03 Challenges Based on Evidentiary and Procedural Issues
7.04 Challenges that Arbitrators Exceeded Their Authority
7.05 Manifest Disregard of the Law
7.06 Non-Statutory Grounds for Review: Public Policy