Supreme Court Decision Alert - March 5, 2014

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued one decision, described below, of interest to the business community.

Federal Arbitration Act—Preconditions to Arbitration

BG Group PLC v. Argentina, No. 12-138 (previously discussed in the June 10, 2013, Docket Report)

When parties disagree about whether a particular dispute is subject to arbitration, a threshold question often arises: Should that disagreement be resolved by the court or the arbitrator? The Supreme Court has confronted issues of this type on a number of occasions in the context of domestic arbitration. In BG Group PLC v. Argentina, No. 12-138, the Supreme Court addressed a similar question in the context of international arbitration—specifically, whether an arbitrator or a court should resolve the parties' disagreement over the effect of the claimant's lack of compliance with an international treaty's precondition for arbitration, which required suit to be brought first in the local courts of the parties to