In exchange for immunity from suit, Proteon agreed to dismiss its petition to confirm an arbitration award releasing it from the obligation to pay further royalties to Willemijn under the '852 patent. SMC did not possess a similar arbitration award ripe for confirmation and therefore was unable to ''agree to accept'' this additional term. The district court declined to accept Willemijn's proffered explanations for the arbitrators' decision and could not contrive ''any other basis'' for the decision. The district court denied Willemijn's petition and vacated the arbitration award. On appeal, the Second Circuit reviewed de novo the arbitration award under the ''manifest disregard of law'' standard, and concluded that the presence of ''at least one barely colorable justification for the arbitrators' award'' required that the district court' s decision be reversed.
Parties seeking to vacate arbitration awards bear an extraordinarily high burden.
Indeed, as Judge Meskill pointed out, the Proteon arbitration award, unlike the SCM settlement agreement, did not grant Proteon full immunity from suit under the '852 patent but only for products Proteon was manufacturing at the time. He vacated the order of the district court and remanded the case with directions to confirm the arbitration award. With its decision in Willemijn , the Second Circuit has taken yet a further step in the direction of insulating arbitral decisions from judicial review and vesting arbitrators with virtually unchecked decisionmaking authority. To some, this is simply an acceptable risk of arbitration. The plaintiffs, firefighters Terrence Burns, M.D. and John Zoll, collaborated on two screenplays about firefighters that they submitted to Anthony Yerkovich, a California screenwriter.