Texas Court Reinstates Partner’s $37 Million Arbitration Award

An arbitrator that awarded $37 million to a senior partner director at a Texas investment firm could’ve misinterpreted the parties’ contract and the award would still stand, a state appeals court ruled.

So long as the arbitrator considered the contract in calculating the damages, a court can’t correct what it perceives to be an error, the Dallas appeals court said.

The arbitrator’s failure to look strictly to the contract—assuming that she was required to do so—is if anything “an error of law,” the three-justice panel said in the opinion.

The reinstatement of the award favoring Sheldon Stein reverses a trial ...