Opinion ID: 1925042
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Waiver of Appeals Clause

Text: Although the hearing justice never expressly addressed the union's contention that the city had waived the right to appeal the arbitrator's award, in reaching the merits of that award, he impliedly rejected the waiver argument. Section 9.07 of the CBA between the union and the city reads: It is hereby specifically agreed that the decision of the arbitrator shall be final and binding upon the parties and all rights of appeal by either party to any court, tribunal, etc. are hereby expressly waived. The union asserts that, on the surface, there is nothing inherently ambiguous about a waiver of appeal; the clause means that both parties agreed to forgo appeals of any kind and abide by the decision of the arbitrator. The city counters that the clause as written is a nullity, because there is no right to appeal an arbitrator's award in any case. See Dutson v. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., 119 R.I. 801, 805, 383 A.2d 597, 599-600 (1978). Moreover, the city contends that it was the union's motion to confirm that brought the arbitration award before the court in the first place. Given the imprecise use of the general term appeal in a clause dealing specifically with the parties' post-arbitration rights, we cannot say that the interpretation touted by either side is unreasonable. Although it is true in a very literal sense that chapter 9 of title 28 confers no right of appeal on a party aggrieved by an arbitrator's award, § 28-9-18 does offer the option of filing a motion to vacate that award. Black's Law Dictionary 105 (8th ed. 2004) defines appeal as [a] proceeding undertaken to have a decision reconsidered by a higher authority; esp[ecially], the submission of a lower court's or agency's decision to a higher court for review and possible reversal. It is well settled that this Court will eschew a hypertechnical interpretation of a contract term in favor of a more commonplace construction. See Garden City Treatment Center, Inc., 852 A.2d at 542. Based on the plain, ordinary, and common meaning of appeal, we conclude that in the statutorily constructed confines of labor arbitration, a motion to vacate is the functional equivalent of an appeal. [3] Yet while the city's filing of a motion to vacate may have violated the wooly waiver clause found in article 9.07 of the CBA, that circumstance is largely immaterial to the matter before us at present, because under § 28-9-17 the union's motion to confirm, standing alone, was sufficient to trigger the Superior Court's review of the award. This is so because § 28-9-17 provides that upon a motion to confirm, the court  must grant the order unless the award is vacated, modified, or corrected as prescribed in §§ 28-9-18 and 28-9-19, or unless the award is unenforceable under the provisions of § 28-9-13. (Emphases added.) The plain language of § 28-9-18(a) states that the reviewing court  must make an order vacating the award, upon application of any party to the controversy which was arbitrated (emphasis added) if it finds any of the following three circumstances: (1) When the award was procured by fraud. (2) Where the arbitrator or arbitrators exceeded their powers, or so imperfectly executed them, that a mutual, final and definite award upon the subject matter submitted was not made. (3) If there was no valid submission or contract, and the objection has been raised under the conditions set forth in § 28-9-13. It follows, then, that once the award was before the court, the hearing justice was obliged to vacate it if he determined, as he did here, that the arbitrator had exceeded his power. State Department of Corrections, 867 A.2d at 828-29. Other courts facing similar issues have concluded that a motion to vacate is not a mandatory precursor to the vacation of an arbitration award when that award suffers from a defect identified within the statutes that govern arbitration in the jurisdiction. For example, Iowa's arbitration statute quite plainly requires confirmation of an arbitration award unless within the time limits imposed    grounds are urged for vacating, modifying, or correcting the award. Iowa Code Ann. § 679A.11 (West 1998). Nevertheless, the Supreme Court of Iowa upheld a reviewing court's right to vacate a decision in the face of an unopposed motion to confirm: Although section 679A.11 contemplates the court will vacate or correct an arbitration award in response to grounds urged by a party, it does not prohibit the court from raising these grounds on its own. $ 99 Down Payment, Inc. v. Garard, 592 N.W.2d 691, 695 (Iowa 1999). The Fourth Court of Appeals of Texas addressed the very issue we now face, albeit in a different context: As a preliminary matter, we must address whether we may even entertain this appeal because both parties expressly waived their rights of appeal in their stock purchase agreement. The arbitration provisions in the parties' agreement included a provision for arbitration finality: `An award or determination of the arbitration tribunal shall be final and conclusive upon the parties, judgment thereon may be entered by any court of competent jurisdiction and no appeal thereof shall be made by the parties.'    [A] waiver of appeal in the arbitration agreement does not preclude judicial review of matters concerning Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code sections 171.088 and 171.091. Barsness v. Scott, 126 S.W.3d 232, 237-38 (Tex.App.2003). Under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.Code Ann. § 171.088(a)(3)(A) (Vernon 2005), on application of a party, the court shall vacate an award if the arbitrators exceeded their powers. Although we hold that a motion to vacate was not required to prompt the hearing justice's review and eventual vacation of the arbitrator's award, it is of course true that the city did file a motion to vacate that award. But we need not attempt to unring that bell. The extent to which a hearing justice is obligated to scrutinize an award before the court on an unopposed motion to confirm may remain an open question, but because we discern a difference here between the city's motion to vacate and its objection to the motion to confirm, we need not dwell on that point. Referring back to the previously cited Black's Law Dictionary definition of appeal, we note that there are two critical components of an appeal: first, that it is undertaken by the appellant by virtue of the submission of a decision to a higher court; second, that the appellant seeks the reversal of that decision. Black's Law Dictionary 105 (8th ed. 2004). The definition of appeal as a verb  [t]o seek review (from a lower court's decision) by a higher court  highlights that the overt act of seeking the reversal of a decision is just as much a part of an appeal as the hoped-for reversal itself. Id. at 106. An aggrieved party initiates an appeal; a party opposing a motion initiated by an adverse party raises an objection. The city's objection constituted an application to the reviewing court, and provided sufficient grounds to justify a continuation, under § 28-9-18, of the inquiry that the motion to confirm set in motion under § 28-9-17. Cf. Fleet Construction Co. v. Town of North Smithfield, 713 A.2d 1241, 1243 (R.I.1998) (after the statute of limitations for filing a motion to vacate has run, a party may still oppose the confirmation of an arbitration award by filing an objection to the motion to confirm). In the instant case, the waiver clause undoubtedly presents a bit of a conundrum. The parties to the CBA took their chances when they signed off on such a waiver, and it may well be that our interpretation of its import yields a result different from the one originally envisioned by its drafters. But whatever the drafters intended, what they produced was imperfect. Once the union filed a motion to confirm, it bore the risk that the city would object to its motion, and that the hearing justice would vacate the award upon review. Having invoked the court's authority to confirm the award, the union should not be heard to complain that the hearing justice diligently undertook his statutory obligation to vacate the award if he found any of the specific circumstances enumerated in § 28-9-18. We will not countenance an interpretation of the court's statutory responsibilities in arbitration cases that reduces the role of the hearing justice to a mere rubber stamp. See 6 C.J.S. Arbitration § 181 (2004) (citing MBNA America Bank, N.A. v. Coe, 2 Misc.3d 355, 770 N.Y.S.2d 588, 590 (N.Y.City Ct.2003)); see also In re Robinson/Keir Partnership, 154 Vt. 50, 573 A.2d 1188, 1190 (1990). The fact that the hearing justice granted the city's motion to vacate in part is immaterial to our analysis. We simply do not read the waiver of appeal clause so broadly as to prohibit the city from objecting to a motion to confirm. In light of § 28-9-17's mandate that the court must confirm unless the award is vacated    as prescribed in § [ ]28-9-18   , the same result would have been reached if the only motion before the hearing justice had been the motion to confirm.