{"id":111,"date":"2019-02-01T11:01:27","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T15:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/?p=111"},"modified":"2019-02-01T11:01:27","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T15:01:27","slug":"resolving-contractual-disputes-with-an-expert-not-an-arbitrator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/2019\/02\/01\/resolving-contractual-disputes-with-an-expert-not-an-arbitrator\/","title":{"rendered":"Resolving Contractual Disputes With “An Expert Not An Arbitrator”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 On January 29, 2019, the Court of Chancery issued the latest opinion on this topic in Ray Beyond Corp. v. Trimaran Fund Mgt., LLC<\/em>, C.A. No. 2018-0497-KSJM.,<\/a>\u00a0and reiterated that such language will be construed as limiting the\u00a0ADR professional’s jurisdiction to deciding “factual disputes within the decision maker’s expertise.”<\/p>\n

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\u00a0disputes regarding\u00a0calculation disputes to that “expert” but that legal disputes\u00a0were reserved for the courts to decide\u00a0as judicial officers.<\/p>\n

The takeaway from these decisions continues to be a lesson in “words matter.”\u00a0 If contracting parties wish\u00a0certain disputes\u00a0that 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.\u00a0 “Experts” will likely be relegated to deciding factual matters within their expertise, while “arbitrators” will\u00a0likely be found to exercise judicial-like functions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 On January 29, 2019, the Court of Chancery issued the latest opinion on this topic in Ray Beyond … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Resolving Contractual Disputes With “An Expert Not An Arbitrator””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[96,69],"ppma_author":[153],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-adr","tag-delaware-contract-interpretation"],"authors":[{"term_id":153,"user_id":108,"is_guest":0,"slug":"rlrenck","display_name":"Richard L. Renck","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2014\/08\/renckrichard-125x150.jpg","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/delawarebusinesslaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}