Of Words and Contracts: Arbitration and Lexicology

Dispute Resolution Journal, May-Jul 2005 by Dilts, David A

4 Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (Harper Collins 1998).

5 Id. at 104-105.

6 Black's Law Dictionary (Bryan A. Garner, ed., pocket ed. West 1996).

7 Barron's Law Dictionary (Steven H. Gifis, 4th ed. 1996).

8 See Frank Elkouri & Edna A. Elkouri, How Arbitration Works 434-440 (6th ed. BNA 2003) (discussion and criticisms of the plain meaning rule).

9 Theodore J. St. Antoine, "President Address: Contract Reading Revisited," in Arbitration 2000: Workplace Justice and Efficiency in the Twenty-First Century, Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Arbitrators 18 (Steven Briggs & Jay E. Grenig, eds. BNA 2001).

10 Paperworkers v. Misco, Inc., 484 U.S. 29 (1987).

11 For example, see, Bethlehem Steel Corp., 63 LA 867 (Harkless, 1975); Weaver Mfg., 11 LA 825 (Updegraff, 1948); and two cases involving the Tribune-Star Publishing Co., 95 LA 211 (Witney, 1990) and 62 LA 544 (Belshaw, 1974).

12 For example, see Whirlpool Corp., 66 LA 13 (Witney, 1975); Federal Mogul Corp., National Seal Div., 67 LA 1130 (Sembower, 1976); and Stone Creek Brick Co., 83 LA 864 (Dworkin, 1984).

13 For example see Ohio Steel Tube Co., 70 LA 899 (Di Leone, 1978).

14 Elkouri, supra n. 8, at 450-451.

15 Id., at 451 n.93.

16 Combustion Engineering Co., 46 LA 289, 292 (Murphy, 1966).

17 Colgate-Palmolive Co., 40 LA 28 (Altieri, 1962). In this case the parties' contract offered a definition of "layoff" for purposes of the contract provision in dispute. Id. at 32.

18 In the author's experience, Internal Revenue Serv., 93 LA 261, 272 (Dilts, 1989), and Dubuque, Iowa County Sch. Dist. 85 LA 636, 638 (Dilts, 1985), a single source was the reference for the definition of the word under consideration (both cases cited in Elkouri, supra n. 8, at 451 n.93 Apparently many other arbitrators have used the same approach as this author: Associated Milk Producers, 89 LA 1186, 1191 (Wyman, 1987); Spartan Printing Co., 89 LA 605, 608 (Platen, 1987); and American Foundry & Mfg. Co., 83 LA 525, 528 (Newmark, 1984).

19 Kroger Co., 85 LA 1198, 1201 (St. Antoine, 1985), and Warner Press, 89 LA 577, 580 (Brunner, 1987).

20 City of Duluth, 100 LA 309, 312 (Ver Ploeg, 1992), cited in Elkouri, supra n. 8, at 451.

21 See A.A. Sloane & F. Witney, Labor Relations 220-221 (6th ed. Prentice-Hall 1988) (discussion of proofreading and testing of contract language and its limitations).

22 The parties have been very successful in eliminating backlogs of grievances in the arbitration process, and in resolving grievances at the lower levels of the process, much of which they attribute to the JCAM.

David A. Dilts is an arbitrator and mediator, and a professor of economics at the School of Business and Management Sciences at Indiana-Purdue University-Fort Wayne, Indiana.