Editor’s note: This article describes a hypothetical situation.

It was not the first time. Bob had lost arbitration cases before. But this one was different. Bob was sure the arbitrator had a longstanding relationship with Bob’s adversary. It was bad enough, Bob believed, that there was some mutual back-scratching, business referrals and other pecuniary interests between the arbitrator and Bob’s adversary. What was worse: the arbitrator in her pre-arbitration disclosures never said a peep about these relationships.