You may have pondered over the question whether a Judge or an Arbitrator decides if a particular dispute is subject to an agreement to arbitrate.
If you have wondered who makes that sort of decision, it’s actually not an open question. The U.S. Supreme Court held twenty years ago that:
[u]nless the parties clearly
If you were thinking that an arbitration agreement needs to be signed in order to get an order compelling arbitration, your world may have been turned on its ear by the Order from the Business Court last week in Morton v. Ivey, McClellan, Gatton & Talcott, LLP, 2013 NCBC 23..
There’s certainly a fair
For anyone who has agonized over a decision between moving to dismiss or moving to compel arbitration, your strategic torment may be over. A short but important order from the Business Court yesterday ruled that the two options are not mutually exclusive.
In Triad Group, Inc. v. Wachovia Bank, N.A., a bond swap lawsuit filed
The City of Richmond was kind to the City of Greensboro last week. After nearly a decade of litigation and arbitration, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s rejection of a challenge to a nearly $15 million arbitration award against the general contractor of a wastewater treatment facility.
The published opinion in MCI Constructors, LLC v. City of
Both the North Carolina Uniform Arbitration Act and the Federal Arbitration Act are stacked in favor of the enforcement of arbitration provisions. That does not mean that a defendant’s motion to compel arbitration is a foregone conclusion, as a Business Court decision from Tuesday reminded us.
In Capps v. Blondeau, the Plaintiff inherited a significant
There weren’t any earthshaking decisions yesterday from the North Carolina Court of Appeals, but there are a couple of cases worth a quick mention, one on arbitration and one on discoverability in a medical malpractice case of a letter to a "medical review committee." There was also a copyright case yesterday from the Fourth Circuit
A Plaintiff who obtained an Arbitration Award against two members of an LLC lost the right to recover under the Award from the LLC when it settled up with the two LLC members. The case, decided today by the Business Court, is Essa Commercial Real Estate, Inc. v. Five Trees, LLC.
The facts are
There weren’t any opinions from the Court of Appeals last week which would have been considered for the legal equivalent of an Oscar, but three cases are worth an honorable mention. They involve arbitration, the statutory requirements for contracting with a municipality, and a healthcare law case involving Certificates of Need.
Arbitration
The arbitration case
This case enforced an arbitration provision, even though the Plaintiff had never signed the agreements which contained the arbitration provision.
A Motion to Compel Arbitration was granted, because the Plaintiff had done the work described in the agreements and was seeking payment pursuant to those agreements, it had submitted applications for payment pursuant to the
The Plaintiff had never signed the agreements containing the arbitration provisions which the Defendant sought to enforce, but the Business Court on November 19 nevertheless granted a Motion to Compel Arbitration in American Drywall Construction, Inc. v. Superior Construction Corp.,
The Plaintiff was a subcontractor, the Defendant was the general contractor. The Defendant prepared