Court Opinion

ID: 9724557
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:02:05.236741+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:02.556972
License: Public Domain

*152Gordon, J.
(dissenting). In my opinion, this comprehensive partnership agreement was designed to provide for the resolution of all business decisions rather than to permit an impasse as to certain disputes. The language of the arbitration clause is suffficiently broad to warrant this interpretation; paragraph 15 says that “all disputes and questions whatsoever” shall be determined by arbitration.
It is difficult to believe that the parties intended to withhold certain areas of potential disagreement from the arbitration system since the agreement was executed in order to insure continuity of the business. If a given issue, such as the discharge of a permanent employee, were unresolved, it could jeopardize the business and cause a dissolution of the partnership; this would be contrary to the parties’ express declaration that they “are desirous of continuing said partnership.”
The terms of paragraph 15 are very broad; it is admittedly arguable that the specific provisions in paragraphs 8, 9, and 20 tend to dilute the general provisions of paragraph 15. For the sake of argument, it may be assumed that the majority is correct in its interpretation that the elaboration of specifics supersedes the requirement for arbitration of “all disputes and questions whatsoever;” nevertheless, the mere existence óf a dispute as to interpretation of the contract is itself subject to arbitration. This stems from the express terms of paragraph 15 which make arbitrable all questions “touching these presents, or the construction or application thereof.”
In other words, regardless which side is actually correct about the right to arbitrate the effort to discharge a permanent employee, the existence of an issue as to the proper interpretation of the contract must, by its own terms, be submitted to arbitration.
As I read this agreement, the parties committed themselves to use arbitration as a comprehensive technique for *153preserving the operation of the business in spite of divided ownership.
Arbitration is by no means a new device; in 320 B. C., Aristotle said, “The arbitrator looks to what is equitable, the judge to what is law; and it was for this purpose that arbitration was introduced, namely, that equity might prevail.” Rhetoric, bk. 1, ch. 13. An agreement to arbitrate as a method of avoiding litigation is consonant with the legislative policy as expressed in ch. 298, Stats.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Fairchild and Mr. Justice Beilfuss join in this dissent.