Tenth Circuit Punts on “Manifest Disregard”

The Circuits are severely split on the issue of whether “manifest disregard” of the law remains a basis on which to vacate an arbitration award. The Second and Ninth Circuits have held that it is. The Fifth Eighth and Eleventh Circuits have held otherwise. In Abbott v. Law Office of Patrick J. Mulligan, the Tenth Circuit “decline[ed] to decide whether the manifest disregard standard should be entirely jettisoned." Instead, the Court concluded that the “exceedingly narrow circumstances” that would support vacature on that basis were not present because the case did not involve “willful inattentiveness” to the governing law, that is, “something substantially different from a misunderstanding or misapplication of the law.”