Court Opinion

ID: 9758881
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:54:14.899436+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:01:29.226768
License: Public Domain

LEDERBERG, Justice,
joins concurring.
I am in agreement with this opinion but do not subscribe to that portion therein that appears to acknowledge that this court’s scope of appellate-review authority, like the Superior Court’s, is restricted to those factors set out in G.L.1956 §§ 10-3-12 and 10-3-14 or to a “manifest disregard of the law”4 *1107by the arbitrator, all of which pertain to the Superior Court’s limited authority when passing upon a motion to vacate, to modify, or to correct an ai'bitration award. This court’s appellate-review authority is not in any manner restricted by the statutory factors that limit judicial review of arbitration proceedings. Those factors apply to and limit only the Superior Court’s review of an arbitration proceeding pursuant to chapter 3 of title 10. The General Assembly, when it enacted the ai'bitration act in question,5 placed no similar restrictions upon the scope of this court’s appellate-review authority. Instead, the General Assembly expressly provided in § 10-3-19 for this court to have unlimited appellate-review authority when reviewing appeals from final judgments entered by the Superior Court in chapter 3 of title 10 arbitration matters. That section (§ 10-3-19) specifically authorizes this court to enter and “make such orders in the premises as the rights of the parties and the ends of justice require.”6
The specific statutory grant of unfettered appellate-review authority in § 10-3-19 does not in my opinion, require us to indulge in the semantics of discerning between irrational and completely irrational awards, Romano v. Allstate Insurance Co., 458 A.2d 339, 341 (R.I.1983), or between an award made upon error of law as opposed to an award made upon manifest error of law as noted in Westminster Construction Corp. v. PPG Industries, Inc., 119 R.I. 205, 376 A.2d 708 (1977).
The General Assembly, when it enacted the arbitration act in question, vested in this Supreme Court the clear mandate to review final judgments entered by the Superior Court in arbitration proceedings brought pursuant to that act and, after our review, to “make such orders in the premises as the rights of the parties and the ends of justice require.” We should recognize that authority and act pursuant to it, giving, of course, any deference to the findings of the arbitrator when affirmed and approved by the Superior Court.
I note in the record before us that the trial justice expressed his clear disagreement with several of the arbitrator’s factual determinations as well as legal conclusions. He, notwithstanding, reluctantly affirmed the arbitrator’s award but only because of the review limitations imposed upon the Superior Court by §§ 10-3-12 and 10-3-14. Consequently, this court need not accord its usual deferential review to the final judgment in question before us and should avail itself of its specific authority pursuant to § 10-3-19 to correct an injustice otherwise unreviewable.
Albeit never before acknowledged in any of our earlier case holdings, § 10-3-19 has always been in the arbitration act, and does not in any manner portend to limit the scope of this court’s appellate review to that proscribed upon the Superior Court. Accordingly, although I agree completely with the result reached in today’s opinion, I do not believe that it was necessary for this court to reach out and find “manifest disregard of law” in order to overturn the arbitrator’s award reflected in the final judgment below. There was more than sufficient error of law contained in the record before us to support our order in the premises so to protect and preserve the rights of the parties and to satisfy the ends of justice pursuant to § 10-3-19.

. In Westminster Construction Corp. v. PPG Industries, Inc., 119 R.I. 205, 210, 376 A.2d 708, 711 (1977), this court said,
"Although manifest disregard of the law is not included in the statutory enumeration of permissible grounds for upsetting arbitration awards, it has nonetheless crept into the law of arbitration as the result of the Supreme Court's opinion in Wilko v. Swan, 346 U.S. 427, 74 S.Ct. 182, 98 L.Ed. 168 (1953).”
It would be noted that Wilko, the foundation stone for Westminster Construction Corp., was overruled in Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 109 S.Ct. 1917, 104 L.Ed.2d 526 (1989).

. Public Laws 1929, ch. 1408.

. General Laws 1956 § 10-3-19 provides:
"Appeal to supreme court. — Any party aggrieved by any ruling or order made in any court proceeding herein authorized may obtain review as in any civil action, and upon the entry of any final order provided in § 10-3-3, or an order confirming, modifying or vacating an award, he may appeal to the supreme court as provided for appeals in civil actions, and the supreme court shall make such orders in the premises as the rights of the parties and the ends of justice require.”