Court Opinion

ID: 9707461
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:12:22.949652+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:33.239968
License: Public Domain

STEADMAN, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
The parties here had a dispute over attorneys fees totaling approximately $11,000. Pursuant to a three-page agreement in letter form, the question of fees, to which the letter was almost entirely devoted, was subject to arbitration, and I do not understand this to be in dispute. The issue presented is whether this same agreement also subjects to arbitration a malpractice claim for $1,000,000 arising out of the same representation. I do not think that question should have been decided without the opportunity for an evidentiary hearing.
By my reading, even with a lawyer’s eye, the relevant paragraph is unclear in answering the question at issue.1 It is made more so by the context of the entire letter agreement, devoted, as already mentioned, almost entirely to matters of fees and billings. Moreover, the cover letter states that the proposed agreement sets forth the terms “which we discussed in our conference,” and the agreement itself states that it “will confirm and constitute a memorandum of our understanding regarding our representation of you.” In these circumstances, and especially given the special nature of attorney-client agreements recognized by the majority opinion,2 I do not think any final determination as to the meaning and effectiveness of the claimed arbitration provision should have been arrived at3 without a fuller understanding and exploration of the circumstances leading to the execution of the agreement than the record reveals here.

.That being so, it cannot, it seems to me, serve on its face as full disclosure of all its ramifications. I am puzzled by the majority’s seemingly paradoxical view that the language is sufficiently ambiguous to require the resort to a rule of construction for arbitration clauses and yet sufficiently clear to constitute, as a matter of law, adequate notice of its effect.

. This relationship would cause me to doubt the applicability of the normal rule that an arbitration clause covers any dispute to which it is “susceptible of [such] an interpretation,” even if the validity of the clause itself in its claimed coverage was not in doubt, as here.

. I agree with the majority that this was a decision for the trial judge here, at least in the absence of a timely jury demand.