When is an Arbitration Award not an Award at all?
A strange result regarding arbitrations occurred in COKeM Int'l, Ltd. v. Riverdeep, Inc., 2008 WL 4417323 (D. Minn. 9/24/08).
COKeM distributed Riverdeep software pursuant to a licensing agreement. The parties had a dispute and filed various claims against each other. With the stipulation of both parties, the district court referred all claims to arbitration. The arbitrator rendered an opinion on what he described as two threshold legal issues. Although the decision was in favor of COKeM, the opinion did not resolve the dispute or award damages.Riverdeep moved to confirm the opinion; COKeM moved to vacate it.
Generally an arbitration award must be final for a federal court to take jurisdiction. There are some exceptions for partial awards, but the Eighth Circuit has not yet adopted any of these exceptions. The district court held that the arbitration opinion did not even rise to the level of a partial award, so jurisdiction is inappropriate no matter which rule is in force. The court denied both motions.
