An Arbitrator’s Power May Be Greater Than That of a Judge
Arbitration is a creature of contract, and an arbitrator’s powers are in effect defined by the parties’ arbitration agreement, points out a post on the Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo blog ADR: Advice From the Trenches.
“Paradoxically, although an arbitration agreement can be written (double-spaced) on one side of a cocktail napkin, in some cases it may grant greater authority to an arbitrator than a judge has,” writes Narges Kakalia.
In the post, she discusses Timegate Studios, Inc. v. Southpeak Interactive, LLC, in which the Fifth Circuit confirmed an arbitration award in which the arbitrator substantially reformed the parties’ commercial agreement by, among other things, awarding one a broad perpetual license to certain of the other’s intellectual property, despite the fact that the original agreement had granted only a more narrowly drawn ten-year license.