Arbitration Clause Is A Separate Enforceable Agreement

What happens when an arbitration clause is contained within a commercial agreement that one party says never came into existence or is unenforceable? And what if the dispute involves persons who are not parties to the commercial agreement? Is the arbitration clause still enforceable? Yes, the Ontario Court of Appeal recently said in Kolios v. Vranich.

The Background

The dispute arose from a shareholders agreement which contained an arbitration clause. Vranich commenced an action in the Ontario Superior Court and sued both parties to the shareholders agreement and other parties. Kolios moved to stay the action so far as the claim against parties to the shareholders’ agreement, asserting that that claim must be dealt with by arbitration. Vranich said that the parties had never reached an agreement on a schedule to the shareholders’ agreement relating to shareholders loans, and therefore had never reached an agreement on the whole agreement.

Section 7(1) of the Ontario Arbitrations Act, 1991 (the Act), provides that, subject to certain exceptions, if a party to an arbitration agreement commences a proceeding in respect of a matter to be submitted to arbitration, the court shall stay the action. The Ontario Superior Court dismissed an application to stay the action under this sub-section. The Ontario Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and stayed the action against the defendants who were parties to the shareholders agreement, and allowed the action to proceed against the defendants who were not parties to that agreement.

The Court of Appeal applied two sub-sections of the Act. Section 17(1) provides that the arbitral tribunal has authority to determine its own jurisdiction and in doing so, to rule on the validity or existence of the arbitration agreement. This sub-section introduces into Ontario law the now well-know principle of “competence-competence”, that is, that an arbitral tribunal is competent to decide its own competence.

The Court of Appeal also applied Section 17(2) which says that, if an arbitration agreement forms part of a main agreement, then the arbitration agreement shall be treated as an independent agreement for the purposes of a ruling on jurisdiction, even if the main agreement is invalid.

Based on these sub-sections, the Ontario Court of Appeal held that it was up to the arbitral tribunal to decide the question of the validity of the shareholders agreement, not the court. In so holding, the Court of Appeal noted that Vranich did not assert that the shareholders agreement was invalid or void ab initio.

Moreover, the fact that the action would proceed against other defendants did not disturb the Court of Appeal since those other defendants had not sought a stay. The Court of Appeal did not mention sub-section 7(5) of the Act but that sub-section expressly authorizes the court to stay that part of an action which is dealt with in an arbitration agreement, and allow to proceed to trial the balance of the action not covered by the arbitration agreement.

This decision of the Court of Appeal demonstrates the sea change that has taken place in Canada with respect to the stay of actions based upon arbitration agreements. A generation ago, a Canadian court would have had no hesitation in permitting an action to proceed when some of the allegations or some of the parties were not subject to the arbitration agreement. Three fundamental changes have occurred.

First, Section 7(1) uses the “shall” word and thereby mandates arbitration, unless very specific exceptions apply. The courts are reading those exceptions very narrowly. Before 1992, the Arbitration Acts of Ontario used the “may” word and gave the courts discretion to stay or not stay an action brought in the face of an arbitration clause. In those days, the courts were usually prepared to exercise that discretion in favour of the action proceeding and not the arbitration.

Second and as noted above, the Act now clearly addresses, in section 17, many of the former objections to arbitration and provides the arbitrator with the jurisdiction to determine them, even in the face of objections that the main agreement or the arbitration agreement is unenforceable or that the dispute involves persons who are not parties to the agreement. These sections effectively drive all disputes about the subject matter or its arbitrability back to the arbitral tribunal.

Third, the attitude of Canadian judges has fundamentally changed. Judges do not now consider that courts are the superior means of adjudicating disputes. Indeed, they recognize that courts have become so expensive and time-consuming that parties are well advised to go elsewhere to have their dispute resolved. And when they do, judges also now give great, indeed overriding, effect to the parties’ choice to go to arbitration, and are prepared to hold the parties to their bargain.

Further Questions

Some further question remains. How will arbitrators deal with the new authority which they have to determine their own jurisdiction? Will the future track record of arbitrators’ decisions demonstrate that arbitrators are making these jurisdictional decisions responsibly? Or will arbitrators tend to rule that they have jurisdiction, so that they can continue with the arbitration? Will the legislature’s decision to hand these jurisdictional disputes to arbitrators be justified, and will arbitrator’s jurisdictional disputes be upheld by the courts? And since arbitrator’s decisions are made privately and are unknown to the public unless challenged in court, how will the track record of arbitrators relating to jurisdictional matters be judged?

Only time and judges will tell. Ironically, it will take the decisions of judges, and a developed body of judicial decisions reviewing the jurisdictional decisions of arbitrators, to determine how well arbitrators are discharging their responsibility to determine their own authority.

Arbitration agreement – challenging arbitral award – enforcing –

Kolios v. Vranich, 2012 ONCA 269

Thomas G. Heintzman O.C., Q.C., FCIArb May 20, 2012

www.heintzmanadr.com

www.constructionlawcanada.com

Same Court, Different Results: When Does The Limitation Period Start For An Arbitration Claim?

When does the limitation period start for an arbitration claim?  Can the very making of the demand start the period running?  Yes, the Ontario Court of Appeal recently said in Federation Insurance Co. of Canada v. Markel Insurance Co of Canada. In so deciding, the Court of Appeal seems to have reached a conclusion which is contrary to another of its decisions in 2011.

While this decision was rendered in the context of automobile insurance, it may have wide implications for commercial arbitrations, especially under bonds or indemnity contracts.  The decision may mean that, in a wide variety of settings, the very demand by a claimant may start the limitation period running under an arbitration clause.  That is because, under the particular language of the contract in which the arbitration clause is found, the claim may be “discovered’ before or at the very time when the claim is made.  If that is so, then the claimant should start counting the very day it makes its claim.

The Background

Between April and May 2006, Federation paid statutory accident benefits (“SABS”) to its insured under an automobile policy arising from an accident which the insured had with another motorist.  Under Ontario Insurance law, Federation was entitled to recover the SABS from the other motorist’s insurer and made a request for payment from the other insurer.   More than two years later and having not been paid by Markel, Federation instituted an arbitration claim against the other insurer for payment.

The other insurer took the position that Federation’s claim was barred by Ontario’s two year limitation period.  The arbitrator agreed and dismissed Federation’s claim.  The arbitration award was upheld by the Ontario Superior Court and Court of Appeal.

The Court of Appeal held that Federation suffered a loss and had discovered that loss at the very time that it made a demand for payment from the other insurer.  It said:

[T]he first party insurer suffers a loss from the moment the second party insurer can be said to have failed to satisfy its legal obligation to satisfy the loss transfer claim… the first party insurer suffers a loss caused by the second party insurer’s omission in failing to satisfy the claim the day after the Request for Indemnification is made.

I cannot agree with the proposition that no loss is suffered until the second party insurer unequivocally denies the claim. That argument ignores the fact that once a valid request is made, the first party insurer is legally entitled to be indemnified and therefore suffers a loss each day it is out of pocket for the SABS paid to its insured. I note here that this conclusion is supported by the passage I have quoted at para. 9 from the FSCO bulletin for loss-transfer claims stating that loss-transfer claims are to be paid “promptly” upon receipt of a Request for Indemnification and that the relevant arbitral jurisprudence holds that where a first party insurer is successful in establishing a loss transfer claim, interest is payable from the date the claim was asserted.”

The Court of Appeal then considered the language in section 275(4) of the Ontario Insurance Act.   That sub-section stated that “If the insurers are unable to agree with respect to indemnification under this section, the dispute shall be resolved through arbitration under the Arbitration Act.”  (emphasis added)

The Court said that this sub-section did not require, as a precondition to the cause of action arising and the limitation period beginning to run, that the parties actually engage in discussions and actually be unable to agree.  The Court stated its decision on this point as follows:

“In my view, s. 275(4) does nothing more that stipulate that any disputes that cannot be otherwise resolved by the parties are to be resolved by arbitration rather than by litigation. Section 275(4) says: if you cannot agree, your claim is to be resolved by arbitration. It does not say: you must be able to demonstrate a failure to agree or a clear denial of your claim by the other insurer in order to commence arbitration.

I accept that the loss-transfer regime assumes that virtually all claims can and should be resolved by agreement. I accept as well that as a practical matter, insurers should be encouraged to discuss and negotiate claims. Moreover, as a practical matter, no insurer would proceed with arbitration unless it was apparent that an acceptable agreement could not be reached by negotiation. But that does not mean that as a matter of law, an insurer must be able to demonstrate a failure to agree or clear denial of the claim by the other insurer as a condition precedent to commencing a proceeding to enforce a claim for indemnification.”  (emphasis added)

Federation submitted that this approach to the arbitration clause was contrary to public policy on the ground that it would discourage negotiation and real efforts at settlement.  The Court of Appeal disagreed:

“I fully accept that parties should be discouraged from rushing to litigation or arbitration and encouraged to discuss and negotiate claims. In my view, when s. 5(1) (a) (iv) [of the Limitations Act, 2002] states that a claim is “discovered” only when “having regard to the nature of the injury, loss or damage, a proceeding would be an appropriate means to seek to remedy it”, the word “appropriate” must mean legally appropriate. To give “appropriate” an evaluative gloss, allowing a party to delay the commencement of  proceedings for some tactical or other reason beyond two years from the date the claim is fully ripened and requiring the court to assess to tone and tenor of communications in search of a clear denial would, in my opinion, inject an unacceptable element of  uncertainty into the law of limitation of actions.”

In this decision, the Court of Appeal arrived at a result which is contrary to the result in its 2011 decision in L-3 Communication Spar Aerospace Limited v. CAE Inc (which decision was not referred to in the Federation v. Markel decision, although one of the judges sat on both cases).

I dealt with the L-3 Communication decision in my article of July 17, 2011.  In that case, the contract provided for the dates for the delivery of data relating to a hardware and software aviation system.  The contract said that: “The price and other adjustments that are not agreed between the parties may be referred to arbitration”.  Based on that language and other language in the contract, the Court of Appeal held that the limitation period did not commence until the parties had undertaken negotiations and there had been a definite inability to agree on the price and other adjustments. The Court said:

The commercially reasonable interpretation is that a dispute over failure by SPAR to deliver information as required together with the cost consequences caused thereby is one that the parties were obliged to attempt to resolve between themselves. Failing agreement either party is entitled to take the dispute to arbitration

How can these two decisions be reconciled?

In L-3 Communications, the words “not agreed between the parties” were held to mean that the limitation period did not commence before a negotiation and absence of agreement occurred.  In Federation v. Markel, the words “unable to agree” were held not to require the parties to negotiate and be unable to reach an agreement, and not to delay the commencement of the limitation period.

It seems that the only way to reconcile the two cases is to examine the process leading up to the demand in each case.  In L-3 Communications, the parties were involved in a tender process and were in direct dealings and negotiations with each other over price and other adjustments.  The language of the tender documents contemplated real efforts to agree on price and adjustments.  So the Court of Appeal was able to conclude that the words “not agree” meant that the parties were obliged to engage in an actual process of negotiation leading to non-agreement, and until that process was concluded the claim did not arise in law and the limitation period did not begin.

In Federation v. Markel, there were no ongoing dealings between the parties, apart from one insurer’s demand that the other insurer indemnify it.  There was no prior contract, tender or other relationship between the parties.  The parties were simply insurers whose insureds had been involved in a motor vehicle accident.  In this circumstance, the Court of Appeal held that the words “unable to agree” did not signify that the parties had to go through an attempt to agree as a pre-condition to the existence of a legal entitlement to payment and the commencement of the limitation period.

These decisions demonstrate the danger lurking in limitation periods relating to contract claims in general, and to claims under arbitration clauses in particular.  While the general law of limitations will apply to those arbitral claims, the terms of the contract and the terms of the arbitration clause may fundamentally affect the question of when a legal right under the contract or arbitration clause comes into existence.

All the ingredients of the cause of action may have arisen when the party with the claim makes its demand.  The party with the claim may have discovered all those ingredients when it makes its claim.  If these ingredients are in place then, unless the arbitration clause very clearly suspends the limitation period during settlement or negotiation, it may be unwise to rely on a suspension of the limitation period during that period.  Prudence may demand that the claim be issued and negotiations come later.

See  Heintzman and Goldsmith on Canadian Building Contracts (4th ed.), Chapter 6

Federation Insurance Co. of Canada v. Markel Insurance Co of Canada, 2012 CarswellOnt 4051, 2012 ONCA 218

Thomas G. Heintzman O.C., Q.C., FCIArb                                                                                            May 5, 2012

www.heintzmanadr.com

www.constructionlawcanada.com

Conduct After An Arbitration Award May Nullify That Award

A party to a contract may terminate the contract and then start an arbitration to confirm the validity of the termination.  If the arbitral tribunal grants such a declaration, then that party better watch out that it doesn’t continue to treat the contract as still continuing.  If it does, it may waive the termination, and the arbitration will be for naught.  So held the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench in Subway Franchise System of Canada Ltd. v. Laich.  Clearly, this decision is of considerable importance in construction projects, franchise agreements or in other ongoing contractual relationships.

The Background

In 2003, Subway entered into a franchise agreement with Laich for a Subway store in La Ronge, Saskatchewan.  In 2009, Subway terminated the franchise agreement.  The franchise agreement contained an arbitration clause providing for the arbitration of disputes in Connecticut.  In May 2010, the arbitrator upheld the termination of the franchise agreement by Subway.

Subway then sought to enforce that award in Saskatchewan pursuant to the Saskatchewan International Commercial Arbitration Act (ICAA), and statues relating to landlord and tenant and enforcement of foreign judgments.  In 2011, the Saskatchewan Court held that the award would not be enforced because Subway had continued to treat the franchise agreement as outstanding after the arbitration award.

The Court held that Subway had met the requirements of the Model Law in the ICAA.  The Court also found that no objections to the award could be raised since no request for recourse against the award had been brought within the time specified in the Model Law.  Nevertheless, the Court held that the arbitral award was not enforceable because, after the award, both parties continued to operate pursuant to the provisions of the franchise agreement.  Laich continued to make all remittances and there was no change in the support given by Subway to the franchise operation.   Laich continued to pay the royalties due under the franchise agreement.  In what was undoubtedly a form letter, Subway wrote to Laich extending “congratulations on a job well done”.

The Saskatchewan Court found that, by its conduct, Subway had “waived the termination decision by the arbitrator as it continued to work with and support the respondent in a profitable partnership.”

The Court also refused to enforce the arbitral award for damages, being $250 per day during the period that Subway did not recover possession.  The Court refused to enforce this award because to do so would doubly compensate Subway which had, during that period, received the remittances and royalties from Laich.  The Court also dismissed Subway’s application for possession of the premises.

While this dispute may be viewed by some as a franchise dispute of little significance, the decision has an importance to construction projects and to other situations where ongoing contractual relationships may exist.

One of the parties may not be willing to take the risk of unilaterally forcing the other party off the site or out of the premises.  That party may need an arbitral (or court) decision approving its view that the other party has repudiated the contract and that it is entitled to terminate the contract.  During the period that the dispute is being dealt with by the tribunal, the innocent party will have to leave the other party in place and not disturb the contractual setting.

But the moment that the innocent party obtains such a decision, then according to the Saskatchewan Court, it must immediately stop dealing with the other party in the normal course.  It must refuse any further payments or benefits from the other party and treat the relationship as at an end.  Its failure to do so may eliminate every value that it secured from the arbitral award.

Three thoughts come to mind:

First, is this decision commercially unreasonable?  Is it consistent with modern electronic technology?  Should we expect a huge international commercial business to turn off all its normal termination procedures so that a tiny franchisee (or sub-contractor, or agency) does not slip through the termination machinery and continue to be treated as a compliant contracting party?  Even though some of us might answer No to these questions, we should expect a trial judge to be unsympathetic to the large organization in these circumstances.

Second, as a technical matter, this case may not strictly be about waiver.  The parties were apparently bound by the arbitrator’s decision that the franchise agreement had terminated due to the principles of res judicata.  Rather, the parties conduct may be seen as the re-establishment of their agreement.  By continuing to abide by the agreement, they made a new agreement.

Third, surely there are easy ways for an organization to address the problem.  It can send out a notice at the very beginning of the termination process (and better still, again immediately after the arbitration award) stating that no conduct on its behalf, including the acceptance of money, extension of services or correspondence on its behalf, shall be considered to be a waiver of its position that the agreement is terminated or a waiver of any rights under an arbitral or court award, and that if it accepts any monies from the other party it does not do so in recognition of any continuing contractual rights of the other party and holds those monies in trust to be dealt with in accordance with the arbitral decision.  That sort of letter should be a standard form in the termination documents of any contractor, franchisor or principal.

Once again, this decision is a wake-up call to everyone engaged in a dispute arising from an ongoing contract:

Don’t continue to treat the contract as ongoing after a decision confirming its termination.  If you do, then the contract may be revived and the decision may be worthless.

Arbitration   –   Enforcement   –   Waiver

Subway Franchise System of Canada Ltd. v. Laich, 2011 SKQB 249

Thomas G. Heintzman O.C., Q.C., FCIArb                                                                                       March 25, 2012

www.heintzmanadr.com
www.constructionlawcanada.com

How Correct Does An Arbitrator Have To Be?

What margin of error does an arbitrator have?  Should an arbitral tribunal’s decision be set aside if it is legally incorrect?  Or should a wider deference be shown, so that a decision will only be set aside if it is unreasonable, or perverse?

And how detailed does an arbitral decision have to be? Can it be struck down if the reasons are not adequate?

There are older appellate decisions which addressed these issues in the arbitration context.  In recent years, however, a seismic shift has occurred in administrative law relating to these issues as a result of decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada.  Do the same principles apply to the review of arbitral decisions?

In its 2003 decision in Dunsmuir, the Supreme Court of Canada collapsed the various standards of review which apply to administrative tribunals into two standards.

Decisions must be correct if they truly relate to the jurisdiction of the tribunal, or relate to general questions of law about which the tribunal has no particular expertise.  If they are of that nature, then they will be set aside if they are not correct (the “correctness” standard).  All other decisions of administrative tribunals will only be set aside if, in all the circumstances, they are unreasonable (the “reasonableness” standard).

In its 2002 decision in Sheppard, the Supreme Court held that a court’s decision should be set aside for legal error if the reasons are totally inadequate.  Without adequate reasons, the person who loses does not know why.  Nor does the appeal court have a proper basis to review the original decision without adequate reasons. The “adequacy of reasons” provides a second and related basis for reviewing a decision of an inferior court or tribunal.

In two recent decisions, the Supreme Court applied the Dunsmuir and Sheppard principles to arbitral tribunals.  While both decisions relate to labour arbitrations, there is every reason to expect that the same principles will apply to commercial arbitrations.

In Nor-Man Regional Health Authority v. Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, the Supreme Court upheld an arbitrator’s decision in which the arbitrator had applied the principle of estoppel.  The arbitrator found that the company had breached the collective agreement.  However, he held that the union was estopped from complaining about that breach because it had failed to raise any complaint about the same conduct, and the same interpretation of the collective agreement, by the company over a 20 year period and numerous collective agreements.

The Supreme Court held that the arbitrator’s decision should be reviewed on the standard of reasonableness, not correctness, for three reasons:

First, labour arbitration decisions are normally reviewed on the reasonableness standard.

Second, the principle of estoppel is well known to labour law and highly suited to the ongoing relationships between management and its employees.

Third, (and most importantly for general arbitration law), the Supreme Court held that an arbitrator’s application of common law principles must not always meet the correctness standard.  An arbitrator’s decision applying general principles of law will only be reviewed on that standard if the decision raises legal issues “both of central importance to the legal system as a whole and outside the adjudicator’s specialized area of expertise.”  In the present circumstances, the arbitrator’s reliance on estoppel did not fall in that category.

In Newfoundland and Labrador Nurses Union v. Newfoundland and Labrador (Treasury Board), the Supreme Court upheld a labour arbitrator’s award relating to the calculation of vacation benefits.  That decision was attacked on the basis that it was unreasonable due to the paucity of reasoning in the award.  The Supreme Court applied the Dunsmuir/Sheppard principles and adopted a wide scope of reasonableness, both as to the deference to be shown to the arbitrator and the necessity for detailed reasons.  The Court held that:

The arbitrator’s decision should not be scrutinized by the court separately for adequacy of reasons and reasonableness of result.  These two ingredients are inter-related.  The court’s review process “is a more organic exercise – the reasons must be read together with the outcome and serve the purpose of showing whether the result falls within a range of possible outcomes.”

The arbitrator’s reasons need not include “all the arguments, statutory provisions, jurisprudence or other details the reviewing judge would have preferred.”  Nor need they include “an explicit finding on each constituent element, however subordinate, leading to the final conclusion.”

The reviewing court should not seek to subvert the arbitrator’s decision but supplement them by logic and reasonable inference.

The issue of adequacy of reasons cannot be boot-strapped into the standard of correctness by being labelled a matter going to procedural fairness and therefore a matter of law:  “Any challenge to the reasoning/results of the decision should therefore be made within the reasonableness analysis.”

While these decisions relate to awards of labour arbitrators, the principles they adopt are readily applicable to commercial arbitrations.  They will be particularly important in protecting a decision of a commercial arbitral tribunal from court review when it is alleged that the decision:

does not deal with all issues raised by the complaining party;

or erroneously decides or applies general principles of law;

or is unfair or outside the bounds of reasonableness.

On all these grounds, the Nor-Man and the Newfoundland and Labrador Nurses Union decisions of the Supreme Court will provide powerful support to the party seeking to uphold the award.

Nor-Man Regional Health Authority v. Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals,  2011 SCC 59;

Newfoundland and Labrador Nurses Union v. Newfoundland and Labrador (Treasury Board) 2011 SCC 62

Arbitration – estoppel – standard of review – adequacy of reasons – challenging arbitral award

Thomas G. Heintzman O.C., Q.C.                                                                                                     January 20, 2012

www.constructionlawcanada.com
www.heintzmanadr.com