Reinsurance & Arbitration Focus

The underlying dispute related to a property manager’s limitation of the appellant, Jane Doe, to one pet in her apartment. Doe sued the manager for declaratory relief, injunctive relief, monetary damages, and punitive damages under the Fair Housing Act and the Louisiana Equal Housing Opportunity Act. Doe moved for a preliminary injunction, and the property manager moved to compel arbitration and stay the case pursuant to the lease’s arbitration clause. Doe responded, in relevant part, by arguing that the court should sever the arbitration clause’s cost-splitting provision and require the property manager to pay Doe’s share of the arbitration costs.

The district court granted the motion to compel arbitration, holding that Doe was bound by the arbitration clause. It also declined to rule on Doe’s motion for a preliminary injunction and denied Doe’s request to sever the cost-splitting provision of the arbitration clause and her request that the property manager pay her share of the arbitration costs. The court stayed the case and retained jurisdiction to reopen the case on appropriate written motion. The parties subsequently could not agree on the costs of arbitration, and Doe filed a motion to reopen the case and, again, to sever the cost-splitting provision of the arbitration clause. The district court denied Doe’s motion, holding that, pursuant to the agreement’s delegation clause, disputes regarding the parties’ respective responsibilities for arbitration costs should be addressed by the arbitrator.

On appeal to the Fifth Circuit, the court agreed with the property manager’s arguments that the court lacked jurisdiction. The court held that the district court’s order compelling arbitration and staying and administratively closing the case pending arbitration was interlocutory and unappealable within the meaning of section 16 of the FAA. The court held that Doe’s motion to reopen the case and sever was, in effect, nothing more than a motion to reconsider the merits of part of the district court’s order compelling arbitration. A denial of a motion to reconsider an order compelling arbitration does not possess any more finality than the order compelling arbitration itself. The Fifth Circuit also ruled that the collateral order doctrine did not apply given section 16 of the FAA’s “specific framework for determining whether and when an appeal is proper” and that exercising mandamus jurisdiction, a drastic remedy reserved only for truly extraordinary situations, would be inappropriate.

Doe v. Tonti Management Co., No. 21-30295 (5th Cir. Feb. 1, 2022).