A Practical Approach for Expanding the Review of Commercial Arbitration Awards : Using an Appellate Arbitrator

Arbitration is supposed to be a quick efficient way to resolve a dispute. One of the main benefits is finality. The Federal Arbitration Act does not allow for a merit based appeal from an arbitral award. If an arbitrator makes an error interpreting or apply law, courts are not empowered to intervene. Hall v. Mattel, 552 U.S. 576 (2008). The only review possible is pursuant to the vacatur provisions of Section 10 of the FAA. For this reason, many lawyers and their clients avoid arbitration. Recently some have recognized that nothing in the FAA prohibits a merit based appeal to another arbitrator. Practitioners aware of this possibility now have a tool for addressing the possibility of mistakes in the interpretation or application of law. This article discusses this procedure examining the rules for appeals adopted by the AAA, CPR and JAMS. The chapter updates a previous version published in 2010