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

Heading: Did the Arbitrators Exceed Their Powers in Consolidating the Cases?

Text: The News asserts that the arbitrators exceeded their power in consolidating the arbitration cases for hearing. The panel's prehearing order consolidating the cases stated, in pertinent part: The Panel has determined that the parties shall consolidate procedurally all matters possible without compromising substantive rights of either party. Either party will be heard as the cases proceed on the issue of whether substantive rights of the parties are being abrogated on a case by case, issue by issue basis. The News contends that the hearing degenerated into a de facto consolidation of all of the cases. The agreement does not expressly permit or prohibit consolidation of cases submitted to arbitration. The News relies principally on Protective Life Insurance Corp. v. Lincoln National Life Insurance Corp., 873 F.2d 281 (11th Cir.1989), for its argument that absent a provision in the arbitration agreement allowing for consolidation the arbitrators had no authority to consolidate the cases. In Protective Life, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit determined that, under § 4 of the FAA the power of federal courts is `narrowly circumscribed' to determining if an arbitration agreement exists and, if so, to directing the parties to proceed to arbitration in accordance with the terms of the arbitration agreement, and that therefore, if the arbitration agreement does not include a provision for consolidation, federal courts may not read [such a provision] in. 873 F.2d at 282. This holding does not address the power of an arbitrator, as distinct from a federal district judge, to consolidate claims for hearing. `[P]rocedural questions which grow out of the dispute and bear on its final disposition' are presumably not for the judge, but for an arbitrator, to decide. Howsam v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., 537 U.S. 79, 84, 123 S.Ct. 588, 154 L.Ed.2d 491 (2002). To like effect see Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc. v. McDonald, 758 So.2d 539, 542 (Ala.1999); and Southern United Fire Insurance Co. v. Howard, 775 So.2d 156, 163-64 (Ala.2000). The UAA, as revised in 2000, provides in § 10 that consolidation of separate arbitration proceedings may be ordered where four criteria are satisfied, all of which are satisfied in the present arbitration proceeding. At the hearing, the panel employed the rule of witness exclusion, so that no plaintiff was allowed to sit in on another plaintiff's testimony, until the former plaintiff had testified. In Green Tree Financial Corp. v. Bazzle, 539 U.S. 444, 449, 123 S.Ct. 2402, 156 L.Ed.2d 414 (2003), the United States Supreme Court made these comments in concluding that an arbitrator, not a court, should decide the question of contract interpretation involved in the issue whether class arbitration could take place: [T]he relevant question here is what kind of arbitration proceeding the parties agreed to.... [That question] concerns contract interpretation and arbitration procedures. Arbitrators are well situated to answer that question. (First emphasis original; second emphasis added.) Accordingly, based on this state of the law, we cannot say that the arbitrators exceeded their powers in consolidating the cases for purposes of holding one hearing; in doing so they were exercising their discretion in structuring arbitration procedures.