Attorneys were victorious in the Appellate Division

Attorneys were victorious in the Appellate Division. The Appellate Division affirmed the denial of the plaintiff's motion to consolidate two arbitration proceedings. Defendant engineering subconsultant was sued by the architect who had hired defenant, seeking to release construction liens in place on a number of projects. The architect alleged that the engineering was deficient, and defendant agreed to release the liens as part of a settlement whereby the claims would be sent to arbitration before one arbitrator. The architect was also being sued by its client, a property developer, stemming from one of the projects on which our client had a lien in place. That claim went before a three-arbitrator panel, pursuant to the contract between the developer and architect, which had an arbitration clause. No such clause existed in the contract with defendant. The architect sought to join the two arbitrations together, but this was denied because the prejudice to defendant if the joinder were ordered -- by being forced to arbitrate along with the developer, by being forced into a three-arbitrator arbitration, and by virtue of the fact that undue delay existed -- outweighed any prejudice to the architect in proceeding with two separate arbitrations.