Joshua Kilgore, Appellant v. Robert Mullenax and Senior Dental Care, LLC, Appellees

Summary

The court held that the Federal Arbitration Act governed the parties' arbitration because their businesses and activities involved interstate commerce, and the arbitrator's jurisdictional determination was conclusive under the parties' agreement. It also held that the circuit court properly confirmed the award because Kilgore did not invoke any of the FAA's exclusive statutory grounds for vacatur, and public policy was not an additional ground. Justice Josephine Linker Hart, dissenting, would have treated the arbitrator's disregard of Arkansas whistleblower policy as a basis for vacatur and criticized arbitration as undermining judicial process.