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Doctrine of Functus Officio

Under the doctrine of functus officio, once a panel of arbitrators has exercised its authority to adjudicate the issues submitted to it, the authority of the arbitrators over those question is ended.  In General Re Life Corp. v. Lincoln Nat'l Life Ins. Co., the arbitrators issued an award, and then later issued a "clarification" of the award.  The parties each tried to confirm the award -- Lincoln attempted to confirm the award as clarified and General Re sought to confirm the award as originally issued.  The question was whether the arbitrators had the power to issue the clarification.

The Second Circuit joined the Third, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Ninth Circuit in holding that their was an exception to functus officio where an arbitration award fails to address a contingency that later airses or when the award is susceptible to more than one interpretation.  The District Court had accepted the clarification and, on appeal, the Second Circuit affirmed.

The decision in this case can be found here.

Full post as published by Second Opinions on December 03, 2018 (boomark / email).