How Long You Can Wait To Challenge A Judgment Confirming Arbitration Award Depends On Whether Court Compelled Participation In The Arbitration, Or Whether You Simply Allowed The Arbitration To Proceed Without Objection.
Appellant waited more than seven years to attack a superior court judgment confirming an arbitration award in FIA Card Services, N.A. v. Cross, D071954 (4/1 1/19/18) (Aaron, McConnell, Huffman) (unpublished). While that may seem like an awfully long time (and so it proved to be here), there was a narrow opportunity to attack the judgment that the appellant tried to exploit.
A party seeking to vacate an arbitration award has a 100-day deadline to do so, and the 100-day deadline is jurisdictional. However, in the case of attacking a judgment to confirm the award, there is a loophole: if the court erroneously compelled the parties to arbitrate, then there is a jurisdictional flaw, and of course, a lack of jurisdiction can be attacked at any time. See United Firefighters of Los Angeles v. City of Los Angeles, 231 Cal.App.3d 1576, 1581 (1991). As the Court of Appeal explained:
"In the circumstance where a court orders the parties to arbitrate, if the arbitration process is later found to be invalid, the responsibility for the wasting of resources lies with the trial court, not the litigant, and there has not been any gaming of the system."
Here, however, the Court of Appeal believed that the evidence showed Appellant had received notice of the arbitration, had not participated, and had not objected. Under those circumstances, the Appellant had "forfeited her contention that the arbitration . . . against her was invalid. She may not come to court for the first time a decade after the fact and attempt to undermine a judgment entered based on the arbitration award."
Note that, rather than address a specific time deadline for attacking the judgment confirming the arbitration award, the Court phrased the outcome in terms of "forfeiture" through delay, probably because it recognized that a fundamental lack of jurisdiction that would make a judgment void ab initio can be attacked at any time.
Comments