Court Opinion

ID: 9753474
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:15:12.851694+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:00:27.507737
License: Public Domain

TERRY, Associate Judge,
concurring.
I agree that the trial court’s order should be affirmed, and I join in parts I, II A, and III of the court’s opinion. With respect to part II B, however, I would go further and expressly decide the question of who is an “arbitrator.” That question is squarely presented in this case by Mr. Sanders, and because it may well recur in a future case, I think we should answer it now.
Mr. Sanders does not challenge any acts or omissions of Mr. O’Brien, the person who actually heard his case; rather, he contends that the misconduct of the AAA and its staff invalidates the arbitration award under D.C.Code § 16-4311(a)(2). He maintains that we should read the word “arbitrator” in section 16 — 4311(a)(2), quoted at page 125 of the court’s opinion, to include the administrative personnel of the AAA as well as Mr. O’Brien. According to Mr. Sanders, the general term “arbitrator” incorporates two categories of persons with separate functions: “hearing arbitrators,” who decide disputes, and “administrative arbitrators,” who conduct all the other administrative duties of the organization under whose auspices the arbitration is conducted. We should therefore decide whether the word “arbitrator” in D.C.Code § 16-4311.(a)(2) refers to the AAA as a whole or solely to the individual appointed to arbitrate a dispute, in this instance Mr. O’Brien.
It is well established that courts must interpret statutes “according to their ordinary sense and with the meaning commonly attributed to them.” Davis v. United States, 397 A.2d 951, 956 (D.C.1979); accord, e.g., Peoples Drug Stores, Inc. v. District of Columbia, 470 A.2d 751, 753 (D.C.1983) (en banc). Both the AAA Rules and the relevant case law suggest that Mr. Sanders’ reading of the statute is not consistent with the ordinary, commonsense meaning of “arbitrator.”
First, the AAA Rules make clear that the “arbitrator” is only the person deciding the case, not the entire AAA.1 Rule 12 defines the term “arbitrator” as “the arbitration panel, whether composed of one or more arbitrators and whether the arbitrators are neutral or party-appointed.” On the other hand, Commentary A to Rule 3 states that the AAA staff members who manage the administrative details of a dispute are called “case administrators” — not arbitrators. All of the AAA Rules are consistent with these definitions, differentiating between the AAA (or its administrative staff) and the person appointed to resolve the dispute; only the latter is referred to as an “arbitrator.” For example, Rule 31 states that “[t]he arbitrator shall *128be the judge of the relevance and materiality of the evidence offered,” and Rule 39 provides that “[tjhe AAA or the arbitrator may for good cause extend any period of time established by these rules” (emphasis added).
Moreover, this court has never applied D.C.Code § 16 — 4311(a)(2) to the entire AAA, and our decisions interpreting the statute at least suggest that the “arbitrator” is the person who decides the dispute, and no one else. For example, in Celtech, Inc. v. Broumand, 584 A.2d 1257, 1258 (D.C.1991), we quoted with apparent approval the following language from Burchell v. Marsh, 58 U.S. (17 How.) 344, 349, 15 L.Ed. 96 (1854): “Arbitrators are judges chosen by the parties to decide the matters submitted to them, finally and without appeal.”2 In Cellular Radio Corp. v. OKI America, Inc., 664 A.2d 357, 363 (D.C.1995), we said that [tjhe arbitrator is the judge of the relevancy of evidence.” In light of these precedents and the plain language of the AAA Rules, I would hold expressly that the term “arbitrator” refers exclusively to the person or persons appointed to decide the dispute. In this case that was Mr. O’Brien. Because Mr. Sanders failed to allege any partiality, impropriety, or other wrongdoing on Mr. O’Brien’s part, the trial court was correct when it ruled that there were no grounds to vacate the award under D.C.Code § 16-4311(a)(2).

. AAA Rule 1 provides that the Rules are incorporated into the parties’ contract:
The parties shall be deemed to have made these rules a part of their arbitration agreement whenever they have provided for arbitration by the American Arbitration Association. ... Because Mr. Sanders agreed to be bound by them, we may appropriately consider the way in which the AAA Rules define "arbitrator.” See Cellular Radio Corp. v. OKI America, Inc., 664 A.2d 357, 359-360 n. 3 (D.C.1995).

. This language from Burchell was quoted in the course of a general discussion of the scope of judicial review of an arbitration award. The issue raised here by Mr. Sanders — whether the AAA and its staff may be included in the definition of the word ''arbitrator'^ — was not presented in Celtech, which was decided on other grounds.