Manifest disregard of manifest disregard

After Hall Street Associates LLC v. Mattel, Inc., 552 U.S. 576 (2008), the Fifth Circuit concluded that “manifest disregard of the law” was no longer available as a nonstatutory ground for vacatur of an arbitration award under the FAA. Since then, other circuits have considered whether “manifest disregard” can be a statutory basis for vacatur. In McKool Smith PC v. Curtis Int’l, the losing party in an attorneys fee dispute mounted such a challenge to the arbitrator’s award in favor of the firm, but the Court sidestepped the issue, finding support for the arbitrator’s rulings in the applicable Texas case law. No. 15-11140 (May 23, 2016, unpublished) (Almost simultaneously, the Texas Supreme Court rejected the “statutory basis” argument in Hoskins v. Hoskins, No. 15-0046 (May 20, 2016)).