OOGC and Chesapeake Energy had an arbitration agreement. They had a dispute, too, so they arbitrated it, back in 2016. The arbitration award came back in favor of Chesapeake. OOGC didn’t like that and they thought one of the arbitrators had a conflict, so they went to federal court. The federal court stayed the arbitration, then did . . . a lot of nothing. As the fifth circuit explains,
No rulings were issued by the district court through the remainder of 2017 and most of 2018, despite several unopposed requests from OOGC for a ruling or status conference. Then, in December of 2018 [the district court ruled.]
And the district court didn’t just rule, the district court evidently got it way wrong: “The opinion erroneously referred to Long as the arbitration panel’s chairman and drew attention to what it termed his ‘deceit,’ and ‘corrupt[ion].’”
Your author is ordinarily a big fan of federal district court, and soft on arbitration. Hard to say that’s a reasonable conclusion here, except: the district court got reversed, so all’s well that ends well.
The upshot from the case: first, getting rid of arbitration because of bias from the arbitrator is hard. Congress instructs courts to like arbitration. Second, there are some district judges who really benefit from life tenure.