Opinion ID: 1643072
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Did the Arbitrators Manifestly Disregard the Law in Deciding Teresa McLendon's Claim and Other Matters Applicable to the Fraud Award?

Text: The remaining argument presented by the News concerning the law of fraud is, in its entirety, the following: The Panel also manifestly disregarded the law of Alabama in its handling of Teresa McLendon's fraud claim. Teresa McLendon did not show that The News made any promise or assurance to her when she first signed her first dealer agreement in 1999. She did not show that she relied on any such promise. Even if any promises or assurances had been made to her, she did not pay any money to anyone in exchange for entering into a dealer agreement. The arbitration panel expressly found that Teresa was told that her contract would be automatically renewed as long as she did her job. In the statement-of-facts portion of its initial brief to this Court, the News asserted that Teresa had no discussions with the News about the terms of a dealer agreement, citing to a page of her deposition and a page of her testimony at the hearing. In her deposition, Teresa did answer in the negative when asked if she had had any discussions with anyone from the News about paragraph 8 when she signed her agreement, but at the hearing, when counsel for the News posed the same question to her, she answered: Well, they told me that if I did my job [the agreement] would automatically renew. Earlier in her hearing testimony, she had told her own counsel that she had understood before signing her agreement that [a]s long as I did my job my contract would be automatically renewed and she said that the basis for that understanding was that [i]ts what The News told us. Obviously, the arbitration panel resolved any issue of a conflict in testimony and witness credibility in favor of Teresa McLendon. The other points made only tersely in this portion of the News's argument do not adequately articulate any manifest disregard of the law by the panel.