i believe there are two very important issues the sport has to resolve on this case what is whether or not the parties in their underlying finally right read the civilian he just used to mandatory arbitration and the second is whether the national radio four feet association was appropriately gathered as a party and joined by those phrases temporary restraining order in november of two thousand and thirteen this is the posture of this case is of course an appeal of judge fitz and replaced judge freed on this case his decision to dismiss the case pursuant to six nineteen so i believe the standard review and i think all counsel agreed just in ohio soit has spent a great deal of time in the argument scrutinizing the power of decision since you will trash one of your judgement for the trial for this case and stream we similar to a case decided by this very important opinion written by justice spoke in august two thousand and thirteen freeze and in that decision just justice spoke identified some operative issues some basic laws some principles of i think very well by day first of all that we know that in the underlying within a certain period of time we know that when there is a question about whether or not there is binding arbitration is just a spoke by then a fight in her opinion in august two thousand and thirteen or the supreme court case salsa which says the underlying issue is whether the parties agreed to arbitrate the disputes and that's a fair issue for a trial court to decide whether or not there is a mandatory arbitration clause for you get to arbitration and then there are other cases of come into play by in favor irvington elevator so forth that the with this issue of if you have no original written contract what do you do about the issue of deciding whether or not there was a confirmation whether or not it was adequate whether or not it was a reasonable period of time this case is extremely similar if not virtually identical to the case heard by this court and decided last august in which this court decided there were disputes of fact over whether or not there was a green agreement whether or not the parties had a contract that would call for binding arbitration and this court referred the matter back to the trial court for determination of those underlying factual issues here we have the same situation there are no original underlying contracts there's a question of fact as to whether or not there were confirmations and there are a question of fact around some of the documents the top flight did file in this case in terms of whether or not those are m signature or whether or not those were actually represented confirmation between the parties but just as you suggested pointed to the fact that mr williams ultimately signed under protest these arbitration contractors first response to that your honor would be that i don't leave the case law and talks about trial court term whether or not the original green anticipated mandatory arbitration applies to the arbitration contract it applies to the underlying contract certainly when you look at the record in this case the signature on the irish a contract came several months if not some years after the allegedly agreement on some of these contracts so certainly to put in manifest an agreement between top flight of mr williams at the time the top flight indicates they entered into a sales agreement for graeme it could represent a meeting of minds at that point it didn't happen at that point that if the issue is whether or not the underlying contract is good then that is determined by the arbitrator if there is an agreement to arbitrate so you could end up with a situation where the arbitrator says you know this contract is not even though the trial court has said you have to arbitrate the contract so it sounds like to me you're going at it from the wrong way i mean if we have an agreement to arbitrate then arbitration is not an issue no evidence of would indicate that there was an agreement to submit the mandatory arbitration and the national very iffy dissociation presumed proceed with an issue and ultimately render a default judgment in excess of two million dollars and with the appeal case through that process we filed our objections but you know if you go if it was not filed following its own rules and that there were problems with the evidence that had been attached by top flight and that there were disputes that needed to be resolved like mr williams indication that on these alleged confirmations of a file that's not his signature i don't think our traders can make decisions on the forgery issue so we attempted even arbitration act in the keys very clearly that one is authorized to challenge arbitration even after it's commenced and that's what we did in this case one of the allegations by national gra that this wasn't necessarily in good faith but is that the conclusion we're going to attribute to judge freezes decision to grant a t r o after going through this process for several months and attempting to deal with issues that should have been addressed by the national brain and were not it have not been my client filed a very extensive complaint and trial court and judge freeze made the decision that there was a good reason under the old lawyer arbitration act of the uniform arbitration granted unless treacheries was convinced that there was a problem with the process there was a basis for an injunction and that it was proper of the national grain of feet association be considered a party and restrained from any further arbitration  his retirement was untimely i suppose from our point of view because we don't know what he will do what he would have done on the plenary injunction although it's probably unlikely that he would have not helped distance system position with the p r o but he didn't join further arbitration from happening i realize that you are zero short term by the time we've got to the next stage we were before a different judge but it also stops the arbitration process until the court could make certain factual issues as to whether the underlying contracts here and the agreement to arbitrate at all i recognize justice why when you say that normally these types of issues can be decided by an arbitrator up front as to whether they live they have jurisdiction but there are two problems here with that process one is they didn't they set out jurisdictional rules that says if you want to go to arbitration you have to give us a contract that shows you belong there and they were improperly wasn't able to do it and the national gr any aspect of your even argued why thought flight that just has not been cited and i don't think an arbitrator's in a position to decide issues like like forgery an arbitrator if you're going to assume that you are afraid is going to make a threshold determination of whether or not there are stiction i don't whether or not it's appropriate case before them so you already assuming there's at least some presumptive evidence that would indicate that it's appropriate for them at least for those pulmonary determination and that would come from an original contract if this were but if this were the case we're talking like to file a contract of the original contract which is what's required and show the signatures and show on both sides that there was oil play that indicated it was going to go to the arbitrator and so there was some what seemed to be and a reasonable reliable piece of information a document that would indicate a piece of perception of binding arbitration and i would completely agree with you but that just does not exist in this case so i think what's clear is under sol surface under the related cases that the only supreme court felt arbitration act in the uniform arbitration act in illinois is that it's the trial court that needs to make the issue so raise so you're going to stay application if your if you find in favor of the person objecting or you're going to compel arbitration if you find in favor of the other party the trial court never got to that issue in this case the trial court and i used to be office for the next office to judge since and i think the world of i think that the i frankly i think the trial court took the easy way i think the trial myself i think that fails because that was not the beginning of the arbitration process that was not even the beginning of the sputum that was later in time and national brain basically defaulted in terms of dealing with any jurisdictional or procedural objections that were raised by my clients there are all there are so many factual issues that need to be resolved by the crowd or in the very same manner that this court including the last case needs to be resolved by the by the  six nineteen requiring the trial or to hear the use of procedural sections that affirmed as a matter of fact whether there are three minutes that included mandatory arbitration clause we're talking about under the statute in one of the cases at the time no way i can assure you there was no way that this case was undertaken at the trial for lightly or not a good faith and it was taken substantially into the dispute in a time when no other participate we have to send another point may show great men and simply paid for being able to evaluate these issues and deal with these issues which they have not done this point they are not a victim in this case they are a lobbying organization for grain elevators the provide an alternative to litigation to resolve disputes and they may be very effective in time to time from time to time in doing so they have not been affected resolving this by evidence of the fact that we had to go to trial court and were here before you today and this panel arguing these issues clase law is clear if national grange is not acting within the scope of its own jurisdiction it doesn't enjoy article immunity so i think it is deal they have the right to participate in this case as a party but we're here largely today because they pressed for a complete dismissal did they deal with the issues that we had raised as a matter of jurisdiction procedure no they saw the dismissal on the file or so i'm pleased to have their intellectual input in the case as i'm sure the court is pleased to have them as a participant as a professional but investigating forgery and they're in a good place to do that and i don't think the arbitrator can do so this case really needs to be returned as he did with the last case to the trial court the trial court and probably a relatively short h caution it's said that when parties choose arbitration in their contracts a party who later seeks to void arbitration should not be able to do so merely by claiming that the contract doesn't  exist makes perfect sense doesn't it if all i have to do to avoid arbitration is say well this is a forgery that's it i'm done then no arbitration provision in any contract will ever be enforceable that's  happening here in this case no r g w sign three arbitration services contracts in which it agreed to submit to arbitration the ten grain contracts underlying this case of the only meaningful question before this court is whether those three arbitration services contracts are in forcible we argued in the court below and the trial court agreed that there was no need to even address the boat lividity of the ten grain contracts underlying this case the fact that r j w consented contractually consented to submit this case to arbitration is sufficient it's just it's dispositive no what is it that they what argument have they raised that would suggest that those three arbitration services contracts are enforceable only one is a matter of fact it's one argument in one sentence without any citation to any legal authority they claim they were forced to sign these under duress i find that unusual it's true that when they sign these contracts they did make a they no agreement is secured merely through awful means there is no destructive duress now it was the appellant's duty to respond to that that  to give us some explanation as to why the this rule of law does not apply to this particular case will there explanation as well this is the novo review of the novo review means that this court will not according deference to the trial court's ruling it doesn't mean it's going to leave or it it doesn't mean it's going to wait nor the arguments raised and and that's what makes this entire bill so unsettled is that we have a perfectly good stablished case law that there is no evidence of to rest and to rest would not apply in this particular case and we have no response to that so this is my entire role here today is to respond to a single sentence on page twenty eight of the reef that was unsupported by any case line by thusly this is the first time i've ever had to do anything like this now it's important to keep in mind do is identify a handwriting expert put that evidence before the court we can get these contracts to you original copies but we will insist on a protective order if you want your expert to look at them none of this request of what we have are these general complaints well those contracts just don't exist we numbers and accorded under the jensen ruling that's just not enough them we don't want the arbitrator to resolve these issues because the issues that they raised before attrition are substantially identical to those raised in this case of what happened here and i think the the reason admirably we've got over a year and now we have a delayed oral argument and we have another at least a couple of months before oh we get a ruling in this case it's served its purpose it's time to move on and with that a motion to be clear the facts of this case are that this arbitration was fully briefed to the n g s the n t s b had not even appointed the panel arbitrators it would be a can to have gone over to the supreme court to appeal today's decision before we even walked in the courtroom this morning and knew the panel that we so those are the facts of this case it was fully briefed and it was stopped by the t r that was under her short period of time that the arbitration panel has not been appointed  arbitron immunity which this state has recognized that illinois has a policy favoring arbitration and one of the virtues of arbitration is that it's fish and low cost and effective form for resolving disputes that would be him to create manufacture a conflict of interest with garbage form thereby disqualifying the arbitration form and that just cannot stand that is not in line with the state's policy favoring arbitration and the virtues of arbitration  rule that original peepers be filed is under rule six of the game jeff a's rules and that rules called procedures for preparing a case and it also provides an advice is to put your evidence in chronological order and fasten your papers in the upper left hand corner the jurisdictional rules of the n g s they are found under rule three that is not where that portion of the rule is found and in that same vein it would be for the arbitration panel to decide if the rules were it because they acted outside their jurisdiction as an arbitrator i would say that's simply not the case on the state the arbitrator is immune even if they act outside their jurisdiction while in jeff a certainly does not agree that it is acting outside of  passed and engine f a a refused to issue any decision on our motion to dismiss nor procedural objections which should be resolved in any administrative or route or proceeding higher to doing with the case on the merits and it was only after months of inaction and ignoring our motions that the national day of the dissociation left us with no option but to challenge the action in federal court which will boil all permits in the case along with uniform arbitration so this is not something we did for purposes of the late we would all love to add this case resolved earlier as i know all parties in a short reign or top flight acted decisively or top flight and produced the contracts that they all