Court Opinion

ID: 9473585
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:33:42.750215+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:36.909427
License: Public Domain

MERRITT,
Circuit Judge, dissenting.
It seems to me that the District Court, in ordering Gainesville to take a coal shipment every 8 days, invades the province of the arbitrators. The parties contracted for arbitration of the issues. How the missed shipment situation should be corrected should address itself in the first instance to the arbitrators. The effect of what the District Judge did was to order compensation for past wrongs, an issue clearly subject to arbitration. What has happened here is that Island Creek, once it got its order confirming the arbitrators on another issue, wanted to use its position to improve its situation by getting the District Court to issue a so-called “clarifying injunction” on a different question not yet submitted to the arbitrators.
This view is reinforced when we consider the problem of assessing the value of the coal and the amount that Gainesville should be required to pay for these shipments. This pricing question is obviously one for the arbitrators, and by deciding the shipment question before it is arbitrated the Court got itself into the situation of having to decide this valuation question on a contempt petition.
The overriding principle here is to recognize the separate roles of the federal judiciary and arbitrators in cases where the parties have contracted for arbitration. The Court’s decision mixes up these roles rather than keeping them separate.