The Delaware courts have been asked several times in the last few years to interpret contracting parties’ intent when they have relegated certain disputes to “an expert not an arbitrator” as a form of alternative dispute resolution. On January 29, 2019, the Court of Chancery issued the latest opinion on this topic in Ray Beyond Corp. v. Trimaran Fund Mgt., LLC, C.A. No. 2018-0497-KSJM., and reiterated that such language will be construed as limiting the ADR professional’s jurisdiction to deciding “factual disputes within the decision maker’s expertise.”
In this case, the decision maker was to be an independent accountant, and thus, the court found that the clause at issue was to delegate factual disputes regarding calculation disputes to that “expert” but that legal disputes were reserved for the courts to decide as judicial officers.
The takeaway from these decisions continues to be a lesson in “words matter.” If contracting parties wish certain disputes that might arise be decided by someone other than through litigation in courts, they should carefully spell out the authority of the persons resolving those disputes. “Experts” will likely be relegated to deciding factual matters within their expertise, while “arbitrators” will likely be found to exercise judicial-like functions.