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Connecticut court supports arbitration
March 17, 2005 by Ross Runkel at LawMemo

Kirby's Reports kindly gave permission to quote this post. The reasoning and result are mainstream, and I'm surprised that the trial judge's reasoning was so far off the mark. "Irrelevant," according to the high court.

More support for arbitration from [Connecticut] Supreme Court

In Board of Education v. Nonnewaug Teachers' Assn., SC17138 (Mar. 1, 2005), the Connecticut Supreme Court held that the proper distribution of the value of stock issued to the Board of Education (the “Board”) from the demutualization of Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield was an arbitrable grievance under the parties’ collective bargaining agreement. Here, the Nonnewaug Teachers’ Association (the “Association”) filed a grievance under Section V of the collective bargaining, which provided for the shares of health insurance costs paid for by the Board and the Associations’ members. When the Board denied the grievance, the Association filed for arbitration with the American Arbitration Association as called for in the arbitration clause of the agreement. The Board then filed an action in Superior Court seeking a judgment declaring that that the dispute was not arbitrable since the Board had not violated any provision in the agreement. The trial court subsequently held that the dispute was not subject to arbitration because “neither party could have anticipated” the unexpected distribution of stock and, accordingly, “the parties could not have agreed to arbitrate about it.” Id at 3. In a per curiam decision, the Supreme Court noted that the trial court’s analysis was “irrelevant” because “collective bargaining agreements typically contain provisions that are intended to have broad applicability irrespective of whether a particular occurrence specifically was contemplated by one or both of the parties.” Id. at 4 (internal quotation marks omitted). In rejecting the Board’s arguments, the court noted that the dispute in this case was indistinguishable from Board of Education v. Wallingford Education Assn., 271 Conn. 634, 635, 858 A.2d 762 (2004), an opinion that was issued after the subject appeal was filed, but before oral arguments were heard.

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