As President Obama meets with Asian leaders this week, his conversations with Chinese president Xi Jinping will surely touch on what has become a contentious topic with deep implications in the international community - namely, the rise of Chinese expansionism into...
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed a district court's decision to lift the stay in federal proceedings due to the arbitrator's decision to terminate proceedings based on a party's failure to pay the arbitration fees. It reached this decision by...
In August of this year, the Panama Canal will turn one hundred years old. An engineering marvel from its inception, the canal serves as a shortcut for 13,000 ships every day, making it one of the busiest and most important commercial waterways in the world. Efforts...
Lost in the hype surrounding the Senkako-Diayou dispute between China and Japan over territoriality is another similar conflict that also involves China. For the last few years, China and the Philippines have been contesting a 2,000 mile stretch of sea that not only...
In a major decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently confirmed an arbitral award that permitted class arbitration when the underlying arbitration clause was silent on the permissibility of class arbitration. By issuing this decision in...
In yet another example of the great deference accorded to arbitral decisions by U.S. Federal Courts, the Fifth Circuit recently declined to vacate or modify an award based on allegations of arbitrator misconduct. Despite intimations that the conduct of the opposing...
In the recent decision of Oxford Health Plans v. Sutter, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that even a "grave error" of an arbitrator is not enough to vacate an award in most cases. Oxford Health Plans had gone to federal court seeking to vacate an arbitrator's...
Alternative dispute resolution is rightly gaining steam as an efficient, fair mechanism for the resolution of complex business disputes. Many companies are redrafting their standard-form contracts to include mandatory arbitration clauses. This is particularly true for...
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