Karl Bayer's Disputing Blog » Court Decisions about Arbitration

Busy Day at the Texas Supreme Court

By Rob Hargrove - August 31, 2007

As the Texas Appellate Law blog has noted, the Texas Supreme Court was busy today, releasing “a slew of 13 opinions.” Many of them, on first blush, look interesting. None of them, however, talks about arbitration. Well, that’s not exactly true. One of the opinions came from a case “almost identical” to last week’s Merrill Lynch arbitration case. The quite short opinion simply states that this week’s Merri

Concerted-Misconduct Equitable Estoppel

By Rob Hargrove - August 24, 2007

As you can see, today was a big day at the Texas Supreme Court. The Court handed down three arbitration opinions, as well as a handful of other opinions on other issues. We’ve already blogged about arbitration opinions one and two, but this one is, we think, the most interesting. Today, you see, the Texas Supreme Court refused to adopt concerted-misconduct equitable estoppel as a means by which non-signatories to an agreement to arbitrate c

Fraudulent Inducement Claims Must be Arbitrated

By Rob Hargrove - August 24, 2007

In a per curiam arbitrability opinion released today, the Texas Supreme Court held that a fraudulent inducement claim must be arbitrated, if the contract which was allegedly fraudulently induced contained an arbitration clause, even if the party seeking to compel arbitration is not a signatory to that contract. The case involves fraudulent inducement claims by a group of student electricians against a vocational College; they allege that the Coll

Texas Supreme Court finds Agreement to Arbitrate

By Rob Hargrove - August 24, 2007

Yesterday, we posted about a Third Court of Appeals opinion where a party seeking to compel arbitration was found to have not established the existence of an agreement to arbitrate. Today, the Texas Supreme Court addresses the same issue but comes up with the opposite result. The case involved claims by investors against their stock broker based on Enron stock losses. In this case, the plaintiffs, who sought to avoid arbitration, signed contracts

Third COA Refuses to Compel Arbitration

By Rob Hargrove - August 23, 2007

Well, the Texas Appellate Law Blog scooped us on a Third Court of Appeals opinion handed down today in which the Court refuses to compel arbitration under either the TAA or the FAA. We will not simply recap what Mr. Smith has already posted on the subject, but we wanted to make a couple additional points about the interesting opinion. Really, the case is more about motion practice and Texas appellate practice than arbitrability issues. Judge Yele

Fifth Circuit finds Arbitrator did not Exceed Authority

By Rob Hargrove - August 16, 2007

Earlier this week, the Fifth Circuit handed down an opinion reversing a decision from the Eastern District of Louisiana which had vacated an arbitral award (link is to .pdf file). The underlying case was a securities fraud action against a stock broker, which the Plaintiffs arbitrated under protest, having challenged the arbitrability of the case from the outset. The District Court, however, forced the parties to arbitrate, and the Defendant stok

Third Court of Appeals Enforces Conditions Precedent to Arbitration

By Rob Hargrove - June 8, 2007

We have not been as diligent as we like to be recently with respect to this blog, due to, well, the practice of law. Anyhoo, as luck would have it, way back on May 24, when we ought to have been blogging but weren’t, the Third Court of Appeals issued a opinion denying a petition for writ of mandamus in an arbitration case. The issue is one that comes up a lot, and it’s an important one. We are just sorry we did not discuss it sooner.

Supreme Court to Rule on Appealability of Arbitral Awards

By Rob Hargrove - May 29, 2007

Karl and I have written about arbitral awards and their potential appealability, and we’ve blogged on the subject several times (most recently here). Here in the Fifth Circuit, it is permissible to write a provision for appeal into an arbitration clause, allowing for judicial review of an arbitral award on a basis other than the extremely limited basis provided by the Federal Arbitration Act or the Texas Arbitration Act. However, not all ju

Fifth Circuit Confirms Arbitration Award

By Rob Hargrove - May 18, 2007

On Wednesday, the Fifth Circuit released an opinion confirming an arbitral award (link is to .pdf file) in a dispute between two companies who had contracted to share in the duties of performing corrective laser eye surgery. The party that lost the arbitration sought vacatur on two grounds allowed in FAA jurisprudence: on the statutory ground that the arbitrator exceeded his authority, and on the non-statutory ground that the arbitrator manifestl

Eastern District Blog

By Rob Hargrove - May 4, 2007

The Eastern District of Texas blog is one of our favorites. Today, Michael Smith posted about a district judge’s decision to refuse to compel arbitration on the basis that the party seeking to arbitrate had waived that right by participation in the underlying litigation. We’ve discussed waiver as a defense to arbitration before. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of this. Technorati Tags: arbitration, ADR, law