West Virginia Court Broadly Interprets Contract Provision To Require Arbitration

In Home Inspections of VA and WV, LLC v. Hardin, the West Virginia Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s determination that a home inspection agreement did not require arbitration of a dispute with a property owner.

The agreement provided as follows:

ARBITRATION: Any dispute concerning the interpretation of
this agreement or arising from this inspection report, except for
inspection fee payment, shall be resolved informally between
the parties.

The court found this language to be an unambiguous statement of the parties’ intent to arbitrate, even though the court “concede[d] that the arbitration provision could certainly have been more artfully drafted. However, this simple fact does not render it ambiguous or unenforceable.”