Texas Client Gets Attorneys’ Fee Award Nixed for Arbitrator Bias

A client in a dispute with his lawyer over fees was able to prove that an arbitrator’s failure to disclose a previous relationship with the lawyer made him a biased authority, a Texas court of appeals said Thursday in ordering an arbitration award vacated.

The Texas Court of Appeals, Fourteenth District, concluded that arbitrator David West’s failure to disclose the relationship with attorney Lloyd Kelley constitutes “evident partiality.”

West had previously represented Kelley as his attorney in an undisclosed lawsuit. West alleged that he didn’t remember that he had represented Kelley and that it was an “inadvertent error” on his ...