If you are a party that wants courts to rigidly enforce delegation clauses – sending questions about even the validity of the agreement to arbitration – then you will appreciate a new decision from the Tenth Circuit. In Belnap v. Iasis Healthcare, __ F.3d __, 2017 WL 56277 (10^th Cir. Jan. 5, 2017), the court refused to do even a spot check of whether defendant’s claims of arbitrability were accurate and enforced the parties’ delegation clause.

Belnap involved a surgeon suing a medical center, its parent company, four doctors on its Medical Executive Committee, and its “risk manager,” for notifying data banks that he had been suspended, but not notifying all relevant organizations when it later vacated his suspension.  The surgeon’s agreement with the medical center had a dispute resolution clause that called for first mediation and then arbitration “administered by JAMS and conducted in accordance with its” rules.  Relying on that agreement, all defendants moved to compel arbitration.  The district court found the medical center could compel arbitration of one of the seven claims, but that the other six were outside the scope of the arbitration clause.  The district court rejected the non-signatories’ attempt to compel arbitration and rejected the argument that the parties had delegated questions of scope to the arbitrator.

On appeal, the Tenth Circuit began its analysis, as it should, with the question of who should decide whether the claims are arbitrable. On that question, it found that by incorporating the JAMS Rules into the agreement, the surgeon and the medical center had shown a clear and unmistakable intent to delegate questions of arbitrability to an arbitrator.  It also took exception to the fact that “some courts have suggested that the Tenth Circuit is the only federal appellate court that has deviated from this consensus.” (The consensus being that referencing arbitral rules which delegate arbitrability to an arbitrator is clear and unmistakable agreement to alter the default rule that courts decide those issues.)  It clarified a 1998 decision that had led other courts to that conclusion, thereby appearing to mend any alleged circuit split on that issue.

After finding the arbitrator should decide arguments about scope, however, the 10^th Circuit still had to address another of the surgeon’s arguments supporting the court’s review.  The surgeon asked the 10^th Circuit to “adopt the ‘wholly groundless’ approach of the Fifth, Sixth, and Federal Circuits.”    That approach allows a district court, after finding the parties delegated arbitrability, to conduct a smell test of sorts: whether the assertion of arbitrability is “wholly groundless.”  The idea is, let’s not let parties with delegation clauses go around enforcing them willy nilly, even in instances where there is no legitimate basis for the claim to be arbitrated.  That would force the plaintiffs to waste time and resources going to arbitration, just to be sent back to court again (we hope).

However, the 10^th Circuit “decline[d] to adopt the ‘wholly groundless’ approach.”  It found it is in tension with the inflexible language of SCOTUS’s decisions.  It also cited multiple cases from other federal circuits that require enforcement of a delegation clause, but in fairness it appears that the “wholly groundless” approach was not presented to those appellate courts.  Therefore, there is now a split among the federal circuits regarding whether a court can at least spot-check a defendant’s claim of arbitrability before enforcing a delegation clause.

Finally, to end its arbitrability tome, the Tenth Circuit addressed whether the defendants who were not parties to the arbitration clause could also compel arbitration of the surgeon’s claims because they are “principals and agents” of the medical center. The court found against the non-signatories, finding Utah law did not support binding a parent company to an arbitration clause signed by its subsidiary, and that Utah law also did not support the individuals’ ability to compel arbitration.