In New York you have ninety days from delivery of an arbitration award to move to vacate or modify it. That clock runs whether or not anyone has asked a court to confirm the award, and missing it is close to fatal, because a court confirming an award will not entertain grounds you can no longer raise.
An arbitration award is not yet a judgment. It becomes one when a court confirms it, and confirmation is the step that turns a piece of paper into something that can restrain your bank account. The window between those two events is where the entire defence lives.
How long does each side actually have?
The two deadlines are not symmetrical, and the asymmetry is the trap. The winner has a year to apply to confirm. You have ninety days to apply to vacate or modify, measured from delivery of a copy of the award to you.
| Application | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Confirm the award | One year after delivery |
| Vacate or modify the award | Ninety days after delivery |
A party who waits for the confirmation petition to arrive has usually waited too long.
Law: CPLR 7510; CPLR 7511(a); CPLR 7503.
The winner gets a year. You get ninety days. Nothing about the process reminds you of that.
What are the grounds to vacate?
They are narrow and they are statutory. A court will not vacate an award because the arbitrator got the facts or the law wrong. The grounds concern the integrity of the process rather than the correctness of the outcome.
- Corruption, fraud or misconduct in procuring the award.
- Partiality of an arbitrator who was supposed to be neutral.
- The arbitrator exceeded his or her power, or so imperfectly executed it that no final and definite award was made.
- Failure to follow the procedure Article 75 requires, where the objection was not waived by participating.
Law: CPLR 7511(b)(1).
What if my business never took part in the arbitration?
Then your position is materially stronger, and this is the single most important distinction in the article. A party who neither participated nor was served with a notice of intention to arbitrate may also argue that a valid agreement to arbitrate was never made, that the agreement was not complied with, or that the claim was already time-barred.
Those grounds go to whether the arbitration should ever have happened. They are not available to a party that showed up and lost.
Law: CPLR 7511(b)(2).
What happens once it is confirmed?
Judgment is entered on the award and enforcement begins in the ordinary way, with restraining notices, information subpoenas and levies. At that stage the arguments about the arbitration are gone. Everything worth saying had to be said inside the ninety days.
What this means for you
Find the date the award was delivered and write it down, because that date starts the only clock that matters. Then answer one question before anything else: did your business actually participate in that arbitration? If it did not, your grounds are much wider than the standard list, and the priority is to move before the window closes rather than to wait and see whether the other side takes the next step.
Keep reading
The DocketThere is an arbitration clause. Who decides whether it applies?The DocketWhen is a settlement actually binding? The CPLR 2104 trap in your email thread.The Buyer’s LibraryParts of your letter of intent bind you at signature.
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Before founding Prencipe International, Joe practiced at the top law firms in the world, including Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Baker McKenzie, Morgan Lewis & Bockius, and served at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He has spent his career on high-stakes disputes and transactions for businesses that cannot afford to lose. When a New York business owner gets sued, he answers the same day and is on the docket within the week.
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