Gates

facts are so firmly established that an arbitrator cannot fail to recognize them without manifestly disregarding the law. To vacate an arbitration award based on such an error regarding a legally dispositive fact, the factual error must be dispositive to the disputed legal issue, and the arbitrator must have known about this undisputed fact when she decided the legal issue. In other words, the arbitrator’s factual error must

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

VIP MORTGAGE INCORPORATED V. GATES

have been so critical, obvious, and intentional that it amounted to manifestly disregarding the law. The panel held that the arbitrator’s factual error in apparently not remembering that the parties had agreed to bear their own fees for the settled counterclaims did not fall within the narrow carveout for “legally dispositive facts.” VIP met the first prong because the factual error was legally dispositive, but it could not meet the second prong because the fact was not so obvious that the arbitrator must have known about it when she decided Gates’s fees…