Pekarek Part of Team Advocating for Investor Rights in U.S. Supreme Court with "Evident Partiality" Questions Regarding "Public" Arbitrator

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Former Law Professor Ed Pekarek was recently part of the team that prepared a petition for a writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of a Philadelphia-area investor who is challenging the propriety of an arbitration award issued by a panel on which one "public" member had numerous undisclosed material conflicts of interest, including that her husband was a director of a FINRA member Broker-Dealer at all times during the arbitration hearing, one of a number of facts which disqualified the arbitrator from participation as a "public" arbitrator.  Federal (and some state) courts are sharply split on how to resolve questions pertaining to arbitrator "evident partiality" through varying applications of the Federal Arbitration Act and the Court's opinion in the alliterative Commonweatlh Coatings v. Continental Casualty Co., et al., 393 U.S. 145, 89 S.Ct. 337, 21 L.Ed.2d 301 (1968).

You can read the petition at Howard Bashman's How Appealing blawg.

The Stone v. Bear Stearns, et al. docket is available here.