Boyden v. Lamb

• Decision Date: 25 October 1890
• Citation: 25 N.E. 609,152 Mass. 416
• Parties: BOYDEN v. LAMB.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

152 Mass. 416

25 N.E. 609

BOYDEN v. LAMB.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester.

October 25, 1890

This was an application to the court to accept an award of arbitrators on a submission, under Pub.St.Mass. c. 188, as follows:

COUNSEL

Thayer & Rugg, for plaintiff.

Frank P. Goulding, F.W. Blackmer, and E.H. Vaughan, for defendant.

OPINION

DEVENS, J.

The statute provides for the decision of certain controversies by a submission to arbitration to be entered into and acknowledged before a justice of the peace. Pub.St. c. 188. It is intended thus to afford a more expeditious and satisfactory way for the adjustment of contested demands by tribunals of their own choosing than was afforded by an agreement for arbitration at common law, on which the remedy must be sought by action on the agreement or on the bond given to perform this award. Upon the return of the award made upon such submission into court, the court has cognizance "of the award in the same manner, and may proceed thereon as if it had been made by referees appointed by rule of court, and may accept or reject it, or may recommit it to the same arbitrators for a rehearing." When accepted, judgment is rendered thereon as upon a like award rendered by referees. Id. The submission may be signed and acknowledged by an agent or attorney duly authorized, and the submission upon which the award in question was rendered was signed by J.C. Field, as attorney and was acknowledged, as appears by the certificate, by "Hannah Lamb, by her attorney, J.C. Field." While in his signature Field does not describe himself as attorney for Hannah Lamb, but attorney only, yet as her name is mentioned in the instrument, and also as the acknowledgment is an essential part of the submission, the entire instrument shows sufficiently that it purports to be the act of the defendant. The authority of the agent need not be shown upon the face of the instrument, and the submission and its acknowledgment are in form sufficient to bind the principal. Wright v. Raddin, 100 Mass. 319.

That the right of the court "to accept, reject, or recommit" an award depends upon the question whether a party has actually entered upon the submission by virtue of which it has been rendered, and that this inquiry underlies everything done by the arbitrators, will not be controverted. In the case at bar the defendant denied that she had ever signed or acknowledged the submission, or that Field, who assumed to act as her attorney, ever had any authority to sign or acknowledge such a submission. There was thus presented an issue of fact necessarily to be determined before the character of the award could be considered. The defendant moved for a jury to be impaneled to determine this and several other issues of fact which she presented by her motion. Even if she included several other issues not necessary nor proper to be thus submitted, (and we are of opinion that she did,) and did not separate them, but moved for a jury upon all, yet this should not deprive her of her right to have this inquiry thus divided, either in the form proposed by her or some appropriate form, if otherwise she was entitled thereto. The defendant's motion was disallowed, and the court, without the aid of a jury, passed upon the question involved, and, by its order accepting the award, necessarily held as a fact that Field was the attorney of the defendant, duly authorized to make the agreement of submission. A party by submitting to an arbitration waives his right to a trial by jury as to the matters in controversy, and cannot have the decision of the arbitrators reviewed and revised when they have lawfully proceeded to decide and pass upon them. This would be to defeat the very object of the statute; but it by no means follows that when there is an inquiry whether he has ever assented to an agreement for a submission, as where he contends that the alleged signature of his name...