“Thorny Issues Raised by Third-Party Discovery in Arbitration”

In Broumand v. Joseph, 2021 WL 771387 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 27, 2021) Southern District Judge Jed Rakoff recently addressed issues posed by a party’s attempt to subpoena out-of-state witnesses to a New York arbitration. This article, by Edward Spiro and Christopher Harwood of Morvillo Abramowitz, available in Lexology, analyzes the court’s decision and offers “a cautionary note to practitioners seeking third party discovery in an arbitration.” As they observe, the court held that the Federal Arbitration Act permits nationwide service of a subpoena, but concluded it was enforceable only to a distance of 100 miles from the location of the arbitration, while rejecting the use of videoconferencing as a means to circumvent the limitation.