Kum Tat Limited v. Linden Ox Pasture, LLC, No. 14-17472 (9th Cir. 2017)
Annotate this CaseIn connection with an attempted purchase of a California residence, Kum Tat filed a motion to compel arbitration of a claim against Linden Ox. The district court denied the motion and Kum Tat filed this interlocutory appeal. The court held that the order denying the motion to compel arbitration was not an order from which section 16(a)(1) of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), 9 U.S.C. 16(a)(1), permits an interlocutory appeal. In this case, Kum Tat's motion was neither under section 3 nor 4 of the FAA, and the motion expressly urged application only of California arbitration law and contained no citation to the FAA. Significantly, Kum Tat later emphasized that the motion was not made under the FAA. In the alternative, the court concluded that the district court's order was not clearly erroneous and did not warrant mandamus relief. Here, the district court did not clearly err in reserving for itself the question whether the parties agreed to arbitrate, nor did the district court clearly err in concluding the parties did not form a contract. Accordingly, the court dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
Court Description: Jurisdiction / Arbitration The panel dismissed for lack of jurisdiction an interlocutory appeal from the district court’s order denying Kum Tat Limited’s motion to compel arbitration of a claim against Linden Ox Pasture, LLC, where the arbitration motion relied only on state law and was not filed pursuant to the Federal Arbitration Act. The Federal Arbitration Act authorizes interlocutory appeals from the orders described in 9 U.S.C. § 16(a)(1). The panel held that the district court order denying the motion to compel arbitration was not an order from which § 16(a)(1) permitted an interlocutory appeal because the arbitration motion urged application only of California arbitration law and contained no citation to the Federal Arbitration Act. The panel declined to treat the appeal as a petition for a writ of mandamus given that mandamus is warranted only if, among other requirements, a district court order was clearly erroneous. The panel held that the district court did not clearly err in reserving for itself the question of whether the parties agreed to arbitrate. The panel also held that the district court did not clearly err in concluding that the parties did not form a contract.
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