Recent Posts

A new commentary on this subject is posted under Legal Developments at my general website. Click-through on the link under “Links and Resources” at the left margin, for Marc J. Goldstein Litigation and Arbitration Chambers (www.lexmarc.us).

The Seventh Circuit U. S. Court of Appeals has addressed one of the difficult issues arising from the mid-stream replacement of a party-appointed arbitrator. The Court held that the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) generally requires that a party who contests its opponent’s appointment of a replacement party-arbitrator, on the ground that the substitution is not within the agreement if the parties, must do so by an application to the Court at the time of the substitution, or else the objection will be forfeited. WellPoint, Inc. v. John Hancock Life Ins. Co., 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 17841 (7th Cir. Aug. 7,…
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The Fifth Circuit U. S. Court of Appeals last week reaffirmed its position that 28 U. S. C. 1782, which provides for federal assistance in obtaining discovery for use in foreign and international tribunals, does not apply to private commercial arbitration tribunals. El Paso Corp. v. La Comision Ejecutiva Hidroelectrica del Rio Lempa, 2009 U. S. App. LEXIS 17596 (5th Cir. Aug. 6, 2009). The Fifth Circuit had adopted that position ten years ago in Republic of Kazakhstan v. Biedermann Int’l, 168 F. 3d 880 (5th Cir. 1999). In that case, the court examined the legislative history of the 1964…
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Dear Readers: A recent commentary by Dr. Georg von Segesser of Schnellenburg Wittmer, Zurich, posted on the Kluwer Arbitration Blog (www.kluwerarbitrationblog.com) discusses a recent Swiss Federal Supreme Court case in which the Court denied a motion to vacate an award based on new evidence presented to the Court on an issue of fact determined by the Arbitral Tribunal. I posted on the Kluwer Blog a comment concerning how the same issue might be addressed by an American federal court. That comment is republished here. Georg, I believe a U. S. Court would have reached the same result given this procedural…
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Hall Street v. Mattel, and the Problem of Post-Award Litigation By Marc J. Goldstein Sixteen months after the Supreme Court’s decision in Hall Street Assocs. v. Mattel, Inc., 128 S. Ct. 1396 (2008), and despite the rivers of “ink” that have flowed in commentary on the implications of the decision, one may seriously ask whether the realm of post-Award judicial proceedings has really changed very much. And one may well ask, should that realm change more dramatically than it already has, and if so, how do we get from here to there? For those who desire full-bore judicial review on…
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The death or health-related resignation of an arbitrator during the course of the proceedings is a vexing problem that admits of no easy or fully satisfactory solution. If proceedings have been extensive in a complex case, the substitute arbitrator may never fully “catch up,” and may never fully gain the parties’ confidence that he or she understands the case. Yet starting the case over, or recycling to an early stage, may be a sacrifice of time and cost that one or both parties find unacceptable. A recent federal district court case in New York (In re Ins. Co. of North…
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