Dallas’ Fifth Court of Appeals vacated a $22 million arbitration award in 2011, after finding that an arbitrator failed to disclose gifts given to him by a lawyer who represented a party in the arbitration. Now, the litigants who won that vacatur are asking the Fifth Court for the right to sue JAMS, the arbitrator, a law firm, defendant attorneys and their client involved in that arbitration for fraud and breach of contract.
In 2012, in a Dallas state district court, the plaintiffs sued Fish & Richardson; a firm client; two lawyers associated with the firm, M. Brett Johnson and Geoffrey Harper; JAMS; and a JAMS arbitrator. The defendants all denied the fraud and breach of contract allegations in responses to Ashley Brigham Patten v. M. Brett Johnson and allege the plaintiffs have no right to sue them over the arbitration because they’ve already obtained relief: the Fifth Court’s vacatur of the arbitration award years earlier.
