The Court Needs Your Autograph: Washington Court Rules A Party Must Personally Sign Requests for Trial De Novo in Arbitration

Arbitration rules can be complicated. While amendments typically help clarify these rules, if a party does not keep updated on these changes, they can run into costly trouble.

Claims Pointer:

In this case, Division Two of the Washington Court of Appeals ruled that an aggrieved party must personally sign a request for a trial de novo in arbitration; simply having their attorney sign the form on their behalf is not enough.

Butler v. Finneran, 22 Wash.App.2d 1034 (2022).

Facts:

In 2018, the parties were involved in a car accident. In August of 2020, the case went to arbitration to resolve claims brought by the Plaintiff for personal injury. The arbitration proceeded pursuant to the Superior Court Civil Arbitration Rules (SCCAR) and the Pierce County local arbitration rules supplement.

After the arbitrator filed the arbitration award with the superior court, Defendant filed a request for a trial de novo and a jury demand. Defendant’s request for a trial de novo was only signed by Defendant’s attorney. Defendant did not sign the request himself.

Plaintiff moved to strike Defendant’s request for a trial de novo, arguing that, under RCW 7.06.050 and SCCAR 7.1, the request must be signed by the aggrieved party, not just by counsel. Defendant responded that the attorney’s signature on the request was sufficient because Defendant had authorized his attorney to file the request on his behalf. To defend this claim, Defense Counsel explained that he also relied on a form found on the Pierce County Legal Information website (“LINX”) to fill out his request. Defendant’s attorney argued that the LINX form that he filed did not include an updated requirement for the signature by the aggrieved party.

Although believing that it was “unfair” to strike Defendant’s request for a trial de novo, the trial court granted Plaintiff’s motion and struck the request.

Afterwards, Plaintiff moved for an award of attorney fees and entry of judgment on the arbitration award. The trial court granted Plaintiff’s motion and entered judgment in favor of Plaintiff with an award of attorney fees.

Defendant appealed the Superior Court’s order to Division Two Washington Court of Appeals.

Law:

When interpreting statutory language, courts strive to “ascertain and carry out the Legislature’s intent.” Dep’t Ecology v. Campbell & Gwinn, L.L.C., 146 Wn.2d 1, 9, 43 P.3d 4 (2002). Further, if the meaning of the statute is plain on its face, a court “must give effect to that plain meaning as an expression of legislative intent.” Id. at 9–10.

However, if a statute can be interpreted in more than one reasonable way after a court has reviewed the plain meaning, then the statute is ambiguous. Id. at 12. For ambiguous statutes, the court may look to legislative history and relevant case law to discern legislative intent.

As to the statute under scrutiny in this case, within 20 days after an arbitration award is filed with the trial court, any aggrieved party may file a notice of appeal and request for trial de novo. RCW 7.06.050(1). “The notice must be signed by the party.” Id. The requirement that the notice be signed by the party was added by legislative amendment in 2018.

Further, the Washington Supreme Court is responsible for adopting procedures to implement mandatory civil arbitration. Those procedures are contained in the Superior Court Civil Arbitration Rules (SCCAR). SCCAR 7.1(b) requires that a request for trial de novo be “substantially in the form” set out in the rule. That form was amended by the Washington Supreme Court in 2019, after the legislature amended RCW 7.06.050. The amended rule now provides that the request for a trial de novo “must be signed by the party.”

For attorney fees, SCCAR 7.3 provides that a court “shall assess costs and reasonable attorney fees against a party who appeals the [arbitration] award and fails to improve the party’s position on the trial de novo.” SSCAR 7.3.

Analysis:

It was undisputed that Defendant did not sign the request for trial de novo. Instead, Defense Counsel argued that his client was not required to sign the form himself. He claimed that since he was acting as his client’s agent, an attorney’s signature was substantially “an act by [Defendant] himself.” Defense Counsel also argued that the amendments to both RCW 7.06.050 and SCCAR 7.1 had codified Washington case law allowing attorneys to sign a request for a trial de novo on their clients’ behalf. Defense Counsel contended that this was evidenced by the omission of the word “aggrieved” in the amended statute and court rule.

The Court disagreed with Defendant’s interpretation of both the statute and the court rule, finding that the authorities Defendant cited to support his argument predated the amendments, and that language of the amendments were clear that Defendant himself was supposed to sign the request for a trial de novo. The Court refuted Defense Counsel’s argument that as the form did not include the word “aggrieved,” he would be able to sign the pleading on his client’s behalf.  The Court stated that although the word did not appear in the body of the form, the word did appear on the form in the signature line. The form, the Court noted, contained a space for both the “[s]ignature of the aggrieved party” and another space for the “[n]ame of attorney for aggrieved party.”  

Defense Counsel additionally argued that the trial court order striking his request limited his insurer’s duty to defend. The Court noted that this argument was not substantially different from Defendant’s argument that his lawyer was acting as Defendant’s agent, except to say that his lawyer was also authorized by his insurance contract to act on his behalf and sign the form. Defendant did not explain how the insurance company’s duty to defend him would be limited by a requirement that he sign a request for a trial de novo, so the Court rejected this argument.

The Court ultimately rejected all of Defendant’s arguments and held that the trial court properly struck Defendant’s request for a trial de novo because Defendant did not comply with the clear requirement that he was supposed to sign the request.

The Court also ruled that the trial court had properly awarded attorney fees to Plaintiff under SCCAR 7.3. In their ruling, the Court held that SCCAR 7.3 was still applicable because, even though the trial de novo did not occur, the Defendant still had not improved his position over the arbitration award, making attorney fees appropriate.

Big Picture:

What this ruling boils down to is that it is incredibly important to ensure that you are aware of the rules you must follow in arbitration. Laws change all the time and, as this case demonstrates, sometimes even seemingly small amendments can have important consequences for both arbitration and litigation.