Published July 11, 2018
by Jed Horowitz
AdvisorHub
A California broker who last month lost a $287,000 arbitration battle over promissory note balances owed to Ameriprise Financial Services has asked a court to vacate the award, citing procedural errors by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
The self-regulator violated its own dispute resolution rules by re-classifying the chairman of a three-person arbitration panel as a “non-public” arbitrator after lawyers for each side had completed their review-and-ranking process for selecting arbitrators, according to a petition filed on July 6 in federal court in the southern district of New York.
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“I think that the case has legs,” said Rogge Dunn, an employment lawyer in Dallas, Tex., who often represents brokers. But he cautioned that the rigid arbitration review standards make vacating the award “still an uphill battle.”