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A Connecticut appellate court held that an arbitrator lost personal jurisdiction over the parties when he missed a statutory deadline for issuing an award; therefore, the award held "no legal effect" and should be vacated.
In Remax Right Choice v. Aryeh, 100 Conn. App. 373 (Conn. App. Ct. Apr. 10, 2007) Remax Right Choice (Remax) accused Aryeh of non-payment of commission from a real estate deal. Though the arbitrator eventually awarded Remax nearly $130,000, the award was issued three months after a Connecticut statutory deadline for issuing awards had expired.
The issue before the Court was whether Aryeh, by not objecting to the delay until after the award had been issued, waived the statute's thirty-day deadline. However, the Court pointed out that the statute required the parties to "expressly extend" the deadline in writing.
Given that the records contained no evidence of such an extension, the thirty-day deadline remained in effect. When the deadline passed, the arbitrator lost personal jurisdiction over the matter, and his award for Remax, by the same statute, had "no legal effect." Consequently, no valid arbitration award existed for the Court to confirm.
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