“Tenth Circuit Agrees Arbitration Award Issued Absent an Arbitration Agreement Was a ‘Farce,’ Orders Sanctions Against Pro Se Petitioner”

Alex Silverman of Carlton Fields offers this article, published in JD Supra, discussing the Tenth Circuit’s decision in Wicker v. Bayview Loan Services, LLC. Setting the stage, the court explained that, “[w]hen [defendants] failed to respond to Mr. Wicker’s ‘binding self-executing irrevocable [counteroffer],’ …which also contained scattered and incoherent mentions of arbitration, he proceeded to obtain a nearly $2 million arbitration award and then filed an application to confirm the award.” Agreeing with the lower court’s determination that “[b]ecause arbitration is a matter of contract, and because the theory underlying the arbitration agreement put forward by Mr. Wicker here is unknown to the law of contracts, the purported award is an obvious sham and there can be no valid action based thereon.” And, as Mr. Silverman notes in his article, “although Wicker was pro se, finding his appeal was frivolous, the Tenth Circuit granted the respondents’ motion for sanctions and ordered Wicker to pay double appellate costs.”