United States Ninth Circuit

In plaintiff's appeal from the district court's court vacating an arbitral award on the ground of its excessive size and vacating a punitive damages award on the additional ground that the arbitration panel lacked jurisdiction to enter it after the panel had entered its compensatory award, the order is reversed where: 1) the district court erred in concluding that the size of the arbitration awards demonstrated manifest disregard of the law; 2) the fact that the majority of the arbitrators may have made a mistake in citing a benefit that plaintiff had not purchased did not establish irrationality of its ultimate conclusion that defendant breached its contract; 3) nothing in plaintiff's policy expressly withdrew determination of procedural issues from the panel; and 4) defendant failed to demonstrate either evident partiality or evident corruption in the arbitrators.

Appellate Information

• Argued 11/03/2009
• Decided 06/10/2010
• Published 06/10/2010

Judges

• Before BETTY B. FLETCHER, WILLIAM C. CANBY, JR., and SUSAN P. GRABER, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Thomas L. Hudson, Osborn Maledon, P.A., Phoenix, AZ, for the plaintiff-appellant.


• For Appellees:
  
• Evan M. Tager, Mayer Brown LLP, Washington, D.C., for the defendant-appellee.