Court Opinion

ID: 9496796
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:35:30.595717+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:48.126178
License: Public Domain

CHERTOFF, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I join Judge Alito’s opinion in full. But I appreciate the reason that a number of courts have been motivated to read a pre-hearing discovery power into the arbitration rules. I write separately to observe that our opinion does not leave arbitrators powerless to require advance production of documents when necessary to allow fair and efficient proceedings.
Under section 7 of the Federal Arbitration Act, arbitrators have the power to compel a third-party witness to appear with documents before a single arbitrator, who can then adjourn the proceedings. This gives the arbitration panel the effective ability to require delivery of documents from a third-party in advance, notwithstanding the limitations of section 7 of the FAA. In many instances, of course, the inconvenience of making such a personal appearance may well prompt the witness to deliver the documents and waive presence. See David M. Heilbron, The Arbi*414tration Clause, the Preliminary Conference, and the Big Case, 45 Arb. J. 38, 43-44 (1990).
To be sure, this procedure requires the arbitrators to decide that they are prepared to suffer some inconvenience of their own in order to mandate what is, in reality, an advance production of documents. But that is not necessarily a bad thing, since it will induce the arbitrators and parties to weigh whether advance production is really needed. And the availability of this procedure within the existing statutory language should satisfy the desire that there be some mechanism “to compel pre-arbitration discovery upon a showing of special need or hardship.” COMSAT Corp. v. Nat’l Sci. Found., 190 F.3d 269, 276 (4th Cir.1999).