United Health Centers of the San Joaquin Valley, Inc. v. Superior Court

The trial court vacated an arbitration award issued in favor of defendant United Health Centers of the San Joaquin Valley, Inc. (UHC), in a wrongful termination case brought against it by its former employee, plaintiff Jennifer Vradenburg-Haworth. The basis of the trial court’s action was that the neutral arbitrator failed to comply with the mandatory disclosure requirements of Code of Civil Procedure section 1281.9 and the ethics standards for arbitrators. Although UHC presented evidence from which the trial court could find that Vradenburg-Haworth’s counsel forfeited the right to seek to have the award vacated on this basis, as that principle is explained in Dornbirer v. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. (2008) 166 Cal.App.4th 831 [ 83 Cal.Rptr.3d 116 ] (Dornbirer), the trial court determined that, pursuant to section 1281.85, subdivision (c) (hereafter section 1281.85(c)), an arbitrator’s mandatory disclosure obligations cannot be waived, and refused to consider Dornbirer . The question before us is whether the forfeiture principles stated in Dornbirer remain viable after the enactment of section 1281.85(c). We conclude that they do. Accordingly, we grant UHC’s…