A Party may Not Expand the Scope of Judicial Review of an Arbitration Clause

Arbitration is a creature of contract. This means if you are going to arbitrate a dispute, as opposed to litigating a dispute, there must be an agreement to arbitrate. However, whether a dispute should be arbitrated pursuant to the terms of the contract is an area that has been heavily litigated for a couple of reasons: 1) a party does not want to arbitrate the dispute and, therefore, files a lawsuit versus a demand for arbitration and 2) an opposing party that has been sued wants to enforce an arbitration provision in a contract. As a result, an order granting...

25 March

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Significant Relationship between Claim and Agreement to Arbitrate

Posted by David Adelstein

in Trial Perspectives

Just because you have an agreement to arbitrate does not necessarily mean that every conceivable claim, including those unrelated to the agreement, are subject to arbitration. For instance, if there are separate agreements—one with an arbitration clause and another without—does not mean that a claim related to the agreement without an arbitration clause will be subject to arbitration per the separate agreement. There needs to be a “significant relationship” between the agreement containing the arbitration provision and the claim, as best explained as follows: "[T]he mere coincidence that the parties in dispute have a contractual relationship will ordinarily not be enough...