Christopher N. Caputo v. Wells Fargo Advisors, LLC

In seeking vacatur of an arbitral award under the Federal Arbitration Act, U.S.C. Title 9 (“FAA”), §10(a)(4), Petitioner invoked W.R. Grace & Co. v. Local Union, 461 U.S. 757 (1983); United Paperworkers Int’l Union v. Misco, Inc., 484 U.S. 29 (1987); and Eastern Associated Coal Corp. v. United Mine Workers, 531 U.S. 57 (2000), where the Court laid down a public policy exception to the deference normally accorded to arbitral awards. These cases preclude judicial enforcement of arbitral awards that would enforce contractual provisions violating positive law, as determined by courts de novo. The arbitral award at issue in this case would enforce a contractual forfeiture of earned remuneration that is expressly unlawful, void, and unenforceable under applicable state labor statutes. The Third Circuit nonetheless held this Court’s public policy exception inapplicable both because such statutes supposedly did not embody sufficiently well-defined and dominant public policy and because de novo judicial review was supposedly inapplicable where the public policy issue was presented to the arbitrators. Each of these alternative holdings conflicts sharply with decisions by other Circuits applying this Court’s public policy exception. The questions presented are: 1. Whether this Court’s public policy exception is inapplicable to an arbitral award enforcing contractual provisions that are expressly illegal, void, and unenforceable under applicable statutes, on the supposition that such statutes do not embody sufficiently well-defined and dominant public policy.