In Law Finance Group, LLC v. Key, the Supreme Court today holds that a statutory 100-day deadline to request that an arbitration award be vacated is not jurisdictional and can be extended by the equitable doctrines of tolling and estoppel.

The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Leondra Kruger concludes that the 100-day limit applies regardless whether the prevailing party has timely moved to confirm the arbitration award: “if the losing party wishes to attack the award, the statutes make clear that such a challenge must be made promptly to promote the timely final resolution of the matters submitted to arbitration.” However, the court says, the applicable statute doesn’t preclude equitable relief: “we will not assume that the Legislature intended to imbue a time bar with jurisdictional consequences merely because the statute speaks in mandatory terms.”

The court additionally rejects the argument of the defendant unhappy with the arbitration award that the time limit doesn’t matter in any event because the award seeks to enforce an illegal contract, or, as the opinion paraphrases the contention, “a claim of contract illegality can never be forfeited by failure to raise it in a timely response seeking to have an arbitral award vacated.” The court says that, “while the [California Arbitration] Act establishes a basis for seeking vacatur on the ground of contract illegality, it also sets a deadline for doing so.”

The court reverses the published opinion of the Second District, Division Two, Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court leaves it to the appellate court to determine “in the first instance” the “separate question whether [the defendant] has established entitlement to equitable relief in this particular case.” Also, it disapproves another Division Two decision — Darby v. Sisyphian, LLC (2023) 87 Cal.App.5th 1100 — in which the court denied a depublication request (there was no petition for review), and an opinion by the Fourth District, Division One — South Bay Radiology Medical Associates v. Asher (1990) 220 Cal.App.3d 1074.

[Update: Professor Shaun Martin in his California Appellate Report blog praises Justice Kruger’s opinion as “crisp and well-written” and “written in an organized, breezy fashion that I found particularly readable.”]