Arbitration of claim is considered a “civil action or proceeding” for purposes of the statute of limitations applicable to civil cases.

Following a broker-dealer’s motion to dismiss arbitration proceedings as time barred under the relevant statute of limitations for contract claims, the investors filed this declaratory judgment action, seeking a ruling that the statute of limitations did not govern a demand for arbitration. The Florida Supreme Court reversed the lower courts, holding that an arbitration proceeding is included in the meaning of “civil action or proceeding” in Fla. Stat. § 95.011. “An arbitration proceeding is an ‘action’ broadly defined in § 95.011 to encompass any ‘civil action or proceeding’” and setting the time limit for initiating. The court noted that, if an arbitration demand were not governed by the limitations period, stale claims could be asserted contrary to the policy of discouraging stale claims. In addition, if the statute of limitations did not govern, parties could even shorten the time for bringing contract claims, which would violate the text of § 95.03, prohibiting that very thing. While arbitration remains quintessentially a less formal, non-judicial mechanism for resolving claims, it is, nevertheless, governed by the same statute of limitations applicable to civil actions.

*The case was originally decided May 16, 2013, but that opinion was withdrawn and a revised opinion (carrying the same date) was released on November 7, 2013. See 38 Fla. L. Weekly S 809.

Case Law Alert, 1^st Quarter 2014