ARTICLE · 28 MARCH 2006

Think Twice Before Attacking an Arbitration Award – or Face Sanctions, Eleventh Circuit Warns

Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP

Courts cannot prevent parties from filing baseless challenges to arbitration awards, but they can try to discourage them. The Eleventh Circuit recently gave fair warning that a party who loses at arbitration and then drags the dispute through the court system without “an objectively reasonable belief it will prevail” may be required to pay sanctions. Perhaps a “realistic threat of sanctions” will help temper the “never-say-die attitude” that leads some parties to view the arbitrator as just “a f

United StatesLitigation, Mediation & Arbitration

Terry Weiss

Thomas Farnen

Courts cannot prevent parties from filing baseless challenges to arbitration awards, but they can try to discourage them. The Eleventh Circuit recently gave fair warning that a party who loses at arbitration and then drags the dispute through the court system without "an objectively reasonable belief it will prevail" may be required to pay sanctions. Perhaps a "realistic threat of sanctions" will help temper the "never-say-die attitude" that leads some parties to view the arbitrator as just "a first stop along the way" rather than the final decision maker, the Court stated. See B.L. Harbert International, LLC v. Hercules Steel Co., 2006 WL 462368 (11th Cir. 2006).

The Court’s warning came in a case in which the party on the short end of an arbitration award in a construction contract dispute filed a motion to vacate the award, contending that the arbitrator had shown a manifest disregard of the law. The Eleventh Circuit declined to recognize "manifest disregard of the law" as an

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Think Twice Before Attacking an Arbitration Award – or Face Sanctions, Eleventh Circuit Warns

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