Court Opinion

ID: 9542140
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:31:27.703071+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:03:04.201314
License: Public Domain

H. WILLIAM CODER, District Judge,
sitting for Mr. Chief Justice Haswell, dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent from the opinion of my colleagues.
Initially, from a factual standpoint, there is nothing remarkable regarding the circumstances out of which this case arises and our principal consideration, therefore, is the existing state of the case law in Montana, and whether those expressions serve to implement the intent and philosophy of Montana’s Statutory Arbitration provisions and thus give vitality to the concept that parties may contractually agree to submit their disputes to arbitrators for resolution and thus avoid the expensive and time-consuming route of litigation through the Courts.
The majority, in its opinion denying Westech its right to enforce its arbitration clause expressly set forth in its contract with Palmer, relies principally and primarily on § 13-806 (R.C.M.1947) and the Wortman case and its progeny, with little more than a passing reference to the arbitration procedures expressly provided by §§ 93-201-1 et seq., (R.C.M.1947).
In this case the parties negotiated a contract and each gave consideration for the others promise to submit all disputes to arbitration. This does not violate the provisions of § 13-806 as a part of the Montana provisions for arbitration (Title 93, Chapter 201) requires all cases to go to the District Court before an order is binding on the parties.
The Majority state that the decision of the arbitrators “will later be presented to the District Court for adoption”, however, the proceedings in the District Court are required to be more than a mere rubber stamp of the arbitrators decision. § 93-201-7(3) provides that the District Court may vacate an award if the arbitrators exceed their power. This should include any award which is made upon an erroneous determination of a question of law.
It has been recognized by this Court in an opinion by Justice William T. Pigott that the provisions of § 13-806 are not sensible.
*354The common-law doctrine that a provision in a ordinary contract requiring all differences between the parties touching their rights and liabilities there under to be submitted to arbiters, whose decision or award shall be conclusive and final, will not be allowed to bar the litigation of such differences in the courts of the land, is an anomaly, and inconsistent with the right to freely contract; and if it were not so firmly and well-nigh universally established, we apprehend that it would be overturned, as resting on no solid foundation of reason. Cotter v. A. O. U. W., 23 Mont. 82, 89, 57 P. 650, 652 (1899).
It should be noted that this common law rule upon which § 13-806 is based, was developed in a time where the Courts were paid by the parties for each case and to allow such arbitration was to cut the judges pay. This is no longer the case, and further, there is not a court in this country which, does not have more work than it adequately can handle.
Most law suits tried in the Courts today, involve such technically complex areas that judges must spend an extraordinary amount of time educating themselves in the innumerable technical areas that present themselves in Court. It seems that these disputes could be much more efficiently handled by arbitration where the arbitrators are already experts in the technical areas involved in the dispute before them. Following the decision by experts in the field the disputes can then be taken to Court to insure that the law involved in the dispute has been correctly applied.
Mr. Justice Holmes made a comment which should have been applied by this Court in Cotter in 1899 and which is even more applicable today:
It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past. (Collected Legal Papers, Oliver Wendell Holmes, page 187).