arbitration grievance

[blatmo]

ca. recently had arbitration in which jams arbitrator completely ignored unambiguous written contract provided by other party. written contract said explicitly all changes must be made in writing and all parties acknowledge this. other party unilaterally changed contract and acknowledges no writing.

arbitrator upheld this and refused to credit additional costs due to change against payment to third party saying "had we known what they were doing, we would have agreed with the change." what, then is the point of a clearly written contract -- it's not for an arbitrator to interpret a fact. as i believe martin quinn, jams arbitrator, knowingly disallowed a valid contract and provided make-weight arguments to justify his decision, what recourse does one have against the arbitrator and/or jams, a for-profit arbitration company aggressively advertising itself as "the resolution experts." basic contract law was ignored at great cost to us.

thank you.

 

[ALawyer]

Generally, absent fraud, decisions of an arbitrator, even mistaken ones, are binding. However if you have reason to suspect that JAMS is biased (perhaps because they do all the dispute resolutions for the other side and thus tend to favor the other side) or there was fraud, you may have some recourse. You may also want to write to the head of JAMS and ask them to investigate.