David Zaslowsky and Jacob Kaplan have this article, available in Lexology, discussing the opinion issued by the Southern District of New York in 245 Park Member LLC v. HNA Group (International) Company Limited.
As the article explains, the court confirmed an arbitration award that entered over protests that the proceeding was unfair due to the arbitrator’s determination that a matter denominated as expedited could be decided without discovery on the basis of only written submissions. The article explains that the court “reasoned that an award is fundamentally unfair only if the challenging party’s ‘right to be heard has been grossly and totally blocked.’ Arbitrators are given wide discretion to decide whether or not to hear evidence and, as long as a decision based solely on documentary evidence is reasonable, the proceeding is not fundamentally unfair. Here, the arbitrator considered extensive submissions by the parties in connection with the scheduling decision and the final merits decision, and there was no fundamental unfairness in either decision.”
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