Court Opinion

ID: 9466053
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:04:20.849268+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:31.413915
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Although I am unhappy about the situation presented here, I am not unhappy enough to dissent from the result reached or from Judge Pell’s reasoning. I do, however, want to register that unhappiness by voicing a strong admonition to arbitrators, and especially to lawyers who are chosen to act as arbitrators, to show more sensitivity to possible violations of Rule 18 of the AAA Commercial Rules than was exhibited by Chairman White.
The arbitration involved a conflict between the United States Wrestling Federation (“USWF”) and the Wrestling Division of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States, Inc. (“WD/AAU”). The National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”) financed and directed the arbitration for the USWF against the WD/AAU.
Northwestern University is a member of the NCAA and has paid dues in excess of $24,000 to the NCAA since 1975. It, in turn, has received in excess of one million dollars from the NCAA’s televised football program since 1976.
Since 1958 Northwestern has employed Ken Kraft as its head wrestling coach. Kraft was one of three original incorporators of the USWF, is a former president of the USWF, currently serves as a voting member-at-large of the USWF’s Governing Council, and was a principal witness for the USWF at the arbitration hearing. Since the USWF’s creation in 1968, Northwestern has hosted the Federation’s first national free-style championships in 1969, the USWF sponsored U.S.-U.S.S.R. dual meet in 1971, and since 1972, the annual USWF sanctioned “Midlands Tournament.” Kraft was instrumental in securing Northwestern as the site for these events. Northwestern was reimbursed for the expenses it incurred hosting these events, and in the years 1974 to 1978 received over $20,000 for hosting the Midlands Tournament.
Assuming that Chairman White was unaware either of Northwestern’s or Kraft’s involvement in the NCAA or the USWF at the time he was appointed, I think it would have been wise, if indeed not his duty, to have revealed both his and his law firm’s relationship with Northwestern when the foregoing facts were disclosed during the hearing. Yet apparently he did nothing in that direction. On the other hand, the WD/AAU made no attempt to investigate White’s background until after the arbitration had ended and it had lost the dispute. To me this was inexcusable.
As Judge Pell points out, the salutary expedient of arbitration may be frustrated if arbitrators do not “bend over backward’’,’ to observe the rules and canons designed to' insure both the reality and the appearance,1 of neutrality. Thus, when an arbitrator’s I neutrality could be subject to any legiti*323mate doubt, it would seem the wiser course to disclose relationships with interested parties rather than to brush the boundaries of the ethic expressed in Rule 18.