Court Opinion

ID: 9756969
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:11:31.901645+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:33.616023
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Price, J.:
In dissenting it seems to me important to note the importance of this decision as it may govern future common law arbitration and the traditional and typical tripartite arbitration clause most often encountered therein. As I read the majority opinion it is held, as a matter of law, that an attorney for one of the parties to an arbitration is disqualified from acting as an arbitrator; that bias and prejudice must be presumed and implied; and that any showing of actual bias or prejudice is immaterial and unnecessary. The majority basically relies, I presume, on the reasoning that an attorney is the agent of his client and bound to act for him and that it is against public policy to permit anyone to act as an arbitrator who might be under a temptation or any tendency to favor the party appointing him. Such reasoning, of course, is of ancient origin for in the Maxims of Publilius Syrus, 42 B.C., it is said, “No one should be judge of his own cause.”
If this case involved a judge, master or umpire I would agree; however, that is not the case before us.
*149Arbitrator Brueck was one of three appointed to resolve this dispute according to the terms of the contract between the parties. He was designated as such by the appellee. There is apparently no dispute in the fact that Mr. Brueck had been employed in the past to represent the interests of appellee in other unrelated litigation. There is agreement that this case is governed by the law pertaining to common law arbitration. As observed by the lower court, that rule of law has been settled in this Commonwealth for so long that it can be safely sublimated to the status of those rules not needing citation, and as such it is correctly stated by the majority.
The sole issue presented for our decision is whether an attorney, in private practice, is disqualified as a matter of law under a typical tripartite common law arbitration by reason of past representation of the party making his appointment.
I can find no case directly on point in this Commonwealth. However, in Goodrich v. Hulbert, 123 Mass. 190, 192, 193, 23 A.R. 60 (1877) it was held by the courts of our sister Commonwealth: “To hold, as a matter of law, that a member of the bar is disqualified to act as an arbitrator, merely because he has formerly been of counsel for one of the parties, would be an imputation upon the uprightness and good faith of the profession.”
In Riccomini v. Pierucci, 54 Cal. App. 606, 608, 202 P. 344, 345 (1921), the court stated: “It is a well settled rule that, to justify setting aside a general award of arbitrators, there must be partiality or corruption upon their part. The relation of attorney and client is not such that it is conclusive evidence of partiality when the client acts as arbitrator in a matter in which his attorney happens to appear as counsel for one of the parties.”
In First National Bank in Cedar Falls v. Clay, 231 Iowa 703, 716, 2 N.W. 2d 85, 92 (1942), this pertinent observation is made: “Choosing arbitrators wholly disinterested is an admirable standard to aspire to, but the *150parties seldom do that, and if all awards were set aside in which it was not done, few awards will stand.”
Arbitration under common law is a favorite of the law and is a creature of contract. In such a contract the parties are free to chart the selection of a private tribunal for the resolution of their disputes. The contract now before us does not spell out a disqualification, nor should one be inferred as a matter of law. Our role in such a case should be limited, as it has been historically, to an enforcement of the terms of the contract.
This contract simply requires each party to name its own arbitrator, and such party-designated arbitrators must agree upon a third party arbitrator, who, it is presumed, will be the neutral arbitrator. Such a contract has been widely used in both labor and commercial arbitration. There have been many observations and writings on such contracts and throughout these it is at once obvious that there is a common acceptance that the party-designated arbitrators are not, and cannot be “neutral” in the same meaning as a judge, master, umpire or third arbitrator must be.1 And indeed I accept the majority’s rationale as it may pertain to a third arbitrator, judge, master or umpire. I do not believe, however, that it should be applied to a party-designated arbitrator.
It seems that this conclusion is inescapable and is indeed the very reason parties do, in fact, agree to such a method to settle their disputes. Each party is thus assured of a choice of one arbitrator who will make sure that the point of view of the appointing party is represented on the decision making panel. As such it is a valuable right that is not to be lightly disregarded in the inter*151pretation of the contract. It is only in that interpretation that I find any meaningful purpose to the three party arbitration here involved. Were it otherwise and the party-designated arbitrators limited solely and strictly to the classification of “neutral” then the contract right is meaningless. So, then, I would conclude that appellee bargained for the right, if it so desired, to make a choice of one believed to be sympathetic to its position or favorably disposed to it. Appellant has that same right. It would seem from an examination of the authorities in this field that this right is available to both parties and that in the vast majority, if not all, of the cases both parties avail themselves of this right.
Public policy does not condemn or forbid this practice. Indeed it would seem, to the contrary, that the practice should be encouraged for such a practice would insure more learned and exact decisions from such panels. Party-designated arbitrators would and should bring to the panel a wealth of specialized knowledge on the subject matter in dispute. In a sense they may be the experts expected to furnish guidance to the neutral member who, by the very reason of his neutrality, may not be in a position to appreciate the problems and the fine points of the subject.
The majority, by its strict adherence to the code of conduct expected of the judiciary, unnecessarily confines the process of arbitration and incorrectly, to my view, classifies the process as judicial. I am inclined to the view expressed by Dean Sturges, that such classification is based on nothing more than “remote resemblances” and is “not very meaningful.” See Sturges, Arbitration—What Is It? 35 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 1031, 1045-1046 (1960).
In reaching the conclusion that a party-designated arbitrator need not be “neutral,” I, in no manner, either directly or by implication, would vary the rule of law allowing an award to be set aside upon clear, precise and indubitable evidence that a party was denied a hear*152ing, or that there was fraud, misconduct, or other irregularity that caused the rendition of an unjust, inequitable or unconscionable award. However, this appeal does not present such a situation.
In brief, it is my view that the contract term herein before us allows and accepts the concept of “partisan” appointees, that such agreement is not contrary to law or public policy, and that neither party may object to the other’s designation of someone associated with his interest or related to him.
I would affirm the award.
Jacobs, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.

. E. Elkouri & F. Elkouri, How Arbitration Works 48, 53, 61 (Rev. ed., 1960). See also Lesser, Tripartite Boards or Single Arbitrators in Voluntary Labor Arbitration? 5 Arb. J. (n. s.) 276, 279 (1950); Phillips, A Lawyer's Approach to Commercial Arbitration, 44 Yale L.J. 31, 47-48 (1935); Taylor, The Arbitration of Labor Disputes, 1 Arb. J. (n. s.) 409, 413 (1946).