Opinion ID: 504653
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: FAB v. Bank Action

Text: 6 At the same time that FAB was attempting to unseal the secret agreement in the Bank v. HRA case, FAB initiated a separate suit against the Bank for money still due for its contracting work. This second case, which we will call FAB v. Bank, did not include HRA, whose presence in the action would have deprived the court of diversity jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1332 (1982). When the suit was brought, the Bank made a motion for the inclusion of HRA as an indispensable party. That motion however was never ruled upon. 3 Instead, the district court stayed the FAB v. Bank action pending arbitration. At the arbitration proceeding all three parties were present. The Bank and HRA were represented by the same attorney. The arbitrator awarded FAB over $848,000 against the Bank and HRA, plus 6% interest from the date of the award to the date of payment. The Bank refused to pay the award until FAB signed a release of all claims, including state court claims for conspiracy and abuse of process that are still pending. FAB refused to sign a general release and instead returned to the district court to enforce its arbitration award against the Bank. The Bank, however, argued that FAB could not bring suit in federal court to enforce the arbitration award without including HRA because HRA was an indispensable party. The district court agreed and dismissed the action. The district court noted that FAB had brought claims in Pennsylvania state court and that it could enforce the arbitration award in that forum against both the Bank and HRA. 7 As a chronological matter we discussed the intervention question first; however, in our legal analysis, we will first address the Rule 19 indispensable party question. We will consider two questions: (1) Can FAB sue the Bank alone to enforce its arbitration award or is HRA an indispensable party to the FAB v. Bank litigation?; and (2) Can FAB intervene in the Bank v. HRA litigation?