Commentary on insurance and reinsurance disputes and related issues and the website of Schiffer Law & Consulting PLLC
Attempting to remove an arbitrator at the early stages of arbitration for alleged bias is difficult to do. The ability to make the challenge depends on the law of the jurisdiction governing procedural issues in the arbitration. Nevertheless, even if entertained, a petition to remove an arbitrator for bias is an uphill battle. In a recent case, the petitioner lost the battle, at least in the New York federal court.
Continue reading “Bias Challenge to Arbitrator Fails”
The issue of whether an arbitration award can be vacated based on bias or prejudice because of an alleged non-disclosure by the arbitrator has long plagued commercial arbitration. Many arbitration codes and organizations promote robust and fulsome disclosures by arbitrators, yet there are always occasions where the losing party claims that the arbitrator was biased or prejudiced and that the alleged nondisclosure was at the root of the problem.
The courts, however, have found that to vacate an award, there has to be a showing of actual bias or prejudice that affects the award. The courts have also found that while more forthcoming disclosure should have occurred, the alleged nondisclosure, by itself, is often not close enough to support vacatur of the award.
In a recent case, this scenario played out again in the context of a property appraisal under an insurance policy.
Continue reading “Arbitrator Disclosure and Vacating Awards”
In my last blog post I discussed a Ninth Circuit case on repeat appointments by arbitrators and the issue of evident partiality. In this blog post I briefly discuss an English Supreme Court judgment on multiple appointments of an arbitrator, the duty to disclose and the rules of bias under English law.
Continue reading “The English View: Arbitrator Appointments, Disclosures and Bias”
Earlier this year, the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in an arbitration case where the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated an arbitration award based on a failure to disclose ownership interest in the ADR provider and the ADR provider’s having administered a significant number of arbitrations for one of the parties to the underlying dispute (the “repeat player” issue). There have been many articles and blog posts on this case, but I thought I would revisit the issue in the context of reinsurance disputes where repeat players are not unusual.
Continue reading “Evident Partiality and Repeat Players in Reinsurance Arbitrations”
