Internal Competition Information

Many thanks to all those who showed up for DRS Orientation on Wednesday afternoon. If you have any questions that you didn't get to ask, feel free to post a comment here or on our google group site.


We have posted a sign-up sheet for the Internal Competition on the google group site: here. Please sign yourself up. If you have a teammate, please sign him or her up as well. If you don't, that is not a problem. We will pair any singles when we distribute the Internal Competition problem.

ABA Competition Opportunity

The St. John's Dispute Resolution Society participated in last year's ABA Representation In Mediation Competition. The competition was held at Roger Williams Law School in Rhode Island. We had a great time with our hosts, learned a lot about what the judges expected and were able to earn a second place finish. We look forward to entering the competition again this year. I will be posting more information on this year's competition as the deadline to apply approaches.

The NYSBA Dispute Resolution Section's First Meeting is coming up

Save the date: Thursday November 13, 2008 -- Hotel Pennsylvania, New York City

The Dispute Resolution Section's First Fall Meeting and CLE Program -- Exploring Established Techniques, Challenges, and New Directions in Arbitration and Mediation

SJU DRS Orientation Next Wednesday!

Meet the Dispute Resolution Society! (previously the Negotiation Club)

We will host a brief orientation next week. Please join us to learn more about this year's internal and external competitions as well as other opportunities.
Wednesday, August 27th at 3:30 pm in Room 1-15.
We look forward to seeing you there.

Hall Street Associates, LLC v. Mattel, Inc.

Justice Souter wrote the Court's opinion in this case on the finality of arbitration awards, ruling that the grounds explicitly enumerated in the Federal Arbitration Act are the exclusive grounds for vacating, modifying, or correcting an arbitration award and cannot be expanded upon, even by agreement of the parties.

After three years of litigation, the parties in Hall Street agreed to arbitrate their remaining claim. The district court approved the parties’ agreement, which provided for entry of judgment on any arbitration award, but required the court to vacate, modify, or correct the award if the arbitrator’s findings of fact were not supported by substantial evidence, or if the arbitrator’s conclusions of law were erroneous.

When the arbitrator ruled against the plaintiff based on an apparent error of law, the plaintiff moved the district court to vacate the award.

The Supreme Court ruled that vacatur was not available in this case. The Court held that the narrow grounds set forth in sections 10 and 11 of the FAA were the exclusive grounds for vacatur, modification, and correction and that the parties’ agreement improperly tried to expand upon those grounds.

The Court opined that the FAA should be seen as “substantiating a national policy favoring arbitration with just the limited review needed to maintain arbitration’s essential virtue of resolving disputes straightaway.”

“Any other reading opens the door to the full-bore legal and evidentiary appeals that can render informal arbitration merely a prelude to a more cumbersome and time-consuming judicial review process,” the Court reasoned.

“The decision recognizes that the sine qua non of arbitration is speed, efficiency, and cost-savings,” says Neal M. Eiseman, New York, cochair of the Arbitration Subcommittee of the Section of Litigation Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee. “The business decision whether to litigate or arbitrate is an either-or proposition; arbitration should not be an opportunity to combine the two,” Eisman says. “To be blunt, parties who arbitrate have agreed to abide by the arbitrator’s legal decision, thereby assuming the competence (or incompetence) of their arbitrators.”

Join The NYSBA!

I encourage all law students to join the New York State Bar Association. It takes just a minute to sign-up (http://www.nysba.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Join/), only costs $10 and offers a wide array of benefits. For example, the Dispute Resolution Section is free to join and is offering a great upcoming event: the Fall Section meeting.

Another great resource for law students is the website NYLawyer. I subscribe to the daily email service which provides the latest on what is happening at NY's biggest firms, recent decisions and other interesting stuff.

Litigating vs Settling

Last Thursday's NYTimes featured an interesting article on a study evaluating outcomes after a plaintiff forgoes a settlement in favor of a trial. The study shows that plaintiffs in civil trials end up getting less out of a trial than they would have had they accepted a settlement offer.
I have some theories on why this might be the case:
1. As the article indicates, lawyers have an incentive to try to collect fees that are contingent on winning in court or to bill for all the hours required to prepare and go to trial.
2. Defendants may be willing to offer a premium to plaintiffs in order to avoid trial. Defending oneself in a public forum might lead to embarrassment, mistakes and further litigation or an extended proceeding, which may eventually result in a settlement anyway.
3. Plaintiffs who perceive they have been wronged may attach too high a value to their right to sue.

Here is the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/business/08law.html?em

New Chair for the ABA's Section of Dispute Resolution

Peter Ryan and I attended a great reception to recognize Professor Lela Love of the Cardozo School of Law as the new Chair of the ABA's Section of Dispute Resolution on Thursday, August 7th. http://www.abanet.org/dispute/staff.html

Professor Love is the director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution at Cardozo and a well-known figure within New York's ADR community.
Photos and the school's official write-up are here.

Peter and I caught up with friends we'd made at past law student competitions and got some good tips on what to expect at the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot. http://www.cisg.law.pace.edu/vis.html

Many thanks to Cardozo for hosting us and we send our congratulations to Professor Love.