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UNITED STATES 1014
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit, 28 October 2020, No. 19-12100
(Lynn McCullough, et al. v. AIG Insurance Hong Kong Limited)
UNITED STATES 1014
The district court had denied the non-signatory defendant's motion to compel arbitration, relying entirely on the 2018 holding of the Eleventh Circuit in Outokumpu that the New York Convention requires that the parties actually sign the agreement containing the arbitration clause, and that the non-signatory subcontractor could not rely on domestic equitable estoppel doctrines to enforce the arbitration agreement because equitable estoppel doctrines conflicts with the New York Convention's signatory requirement. Subsequent to the district court's decision, however, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the decision of the Eleventh Circuit, holding that nothing in the New York Convention conflicts with the application of relevant equitable doctrines. Consistent with that Supreme Court ruling, the Eleventh Circuit granted the appeal from the decision of the district court in this case in a short per curiam decision, and remanded for further proceedings consistent with the opinion of the Supreme Court.
The court discusses the meaning and effect of the referral of the resolution of disputes to arbitration, including: who can ask for referral and when, whether a party has waived its right to request arbitration, the defense that there was no contract at all; whether there was a condition precedent to the commencement of arbitration (e.g. mediation), stay of proceedings v. compelling arbitration, and national procedural specificities such as remand and removal (US), effect of class action. etc.
Multi-party disputes: The court discusses under which conditions non-signatories are covered by an arbitration agreement entered into by another party.