A common way to compose an arbitration panel is for each party to select an arbitrator, then those two select the third arbitrator. The arbitrators selected by the parties may be neutral, or partisan. Marty Weisman, a respected Michigan attorney and arbitrator, has written about the challenges associated with party-appointed arbitrators (e.g., in an article for this year\u2019s Michigan\u2019s Advanced Negotiation And Dispute Resolution Institute [ANDRI]). Marty points out that, if the selected arbitrators are partisan (non-neutral), they may act as advocates for the party who selected them. They end up canceling each other out, and the neutral arbitrator is the one who decides the case\u2014so parties would\u2019ve saved time and expense by simply choosing one neutral arbitrator. Even if the party-selected arbitrators are designated as \u201cneutral,\u201d they still struggle between their need to be impartial and their inherent (even subconscious) bias in favor of the party who chose them. Thus, Marty recommends one neutral arbitrator instead of a panel that includes party-appointed arbitrators.
\nI experienced this tension in an arbitration I did recently. I was a party-selected arbitrator, designated as partisan, yet encouraged to be fair and just. Our neutral arbitrator was a respected former judge. Not being a litigator, I saw myself as an advocate for justice as much as I was an advocate for the party who selected me. In our deliberations, the three of us fairly quickly agreed on a resolution, which was a confirmation to me that we had reached a just result.
\nAfter our decision was announced, however, the party who selected me expressed her disappointment with the award, implying that I had not advocated enough on her behalf. I see this as yet another disadvantage of party-selected arbitrators: the losing party is unhappy, not only with the outcome, but also with their choice of arbitrator. The party might also feel this if there were only one arbitrator, but it would not be the same sense of betrayal as when the party has selected an arbitrator who ends up \u201cletting them down.\u201d
\nI have done arbitrations for years, but usually solo, not as part of a panel. I thought this was a positive experience, until I learned \u201cmy\u201d party\u2019s dissatisfaction. Now I am left to wonder, if another party-selected arbitrator appointment comes my way, should I refuse?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A common way to compose an arbitration panel is for each party to select an arbitrator, then those two select the third arbitrator. The arbitrators selected by the parties may be neutral, or partisan. Marty Weisman, a respected Michigan attorney and arbitrator, has written about the challenges associated with party-appointed arbitrators (e.g., in an article […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":846,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}