ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION
03-2-4840 Associated Humane Societies Inc. v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc., App. Div. (per curiam) (15 pp.) Plaintiff appeals the Law Division’s order denying its application to vacate portions of an arbitration award that limited plaintiff’s recovery of punitive damages to $126,077 and denied its request for attorney’s fees. Plaintiff, which had retained defendant to handle its investments, had determined that it was being overcharged for defendant’s services and filed a statement of claim with FINRA after defendant failed to correct the situation after it was brought to its attention. The panel affirms, finding that: plaintiff’s grounds for seeking vacatur do not fall within any of the statutory parameters for vacating arbitration awards; plaintiff’s argument that the arbitrators committed gross and blatant errors in limiting the punitive damages award and in denying attorney’s fees effectively seeks a review of the award under a standard that the court has abandoned; vacating an arbitration award under the “manifest disregard of the law” standard urged by plaintiff, even if it remains viable post-Tretina, is warranted only if a reviewing court determines both that the arbitrators knew the correct law and consciously decided to ignore it and there is no prove of either; and there was no error in the arbitrators’ decision not to award fees under the Frivolous Litigation statute since, although defendant acknowledged that it failed to act to correct the overcharge, there is no evidence that it abandoned its defense as to the quantum of the resulting overcharge and it in fact succeeded in reducing the amount of the overcharge claimed.
