In November 2025 the Global Arbitration Review and Law360 reported that the Venable LLP team is representing an individual in a contentious arbitration enforcement lawsuit that is now headed for the U.S. Supreme Court. Venable’s client, a Chinese businessperson and investor, is seeking the Court’s intervention after the fairness of his hearing was compromised when one of the three panel members abandoned their post during the proceedings.
The dispute—which initially concerned Venable’s client challenging the enforcement of a $55 million arbitration award issued against him—will now explore the arbitrator’s misconduct. According to Law360, Venable’s client has asserted that the panel member “abandoned an ongoing hearing to walk around his apartment, use the bathroom and engage in a ‘misadventure’ with a woman unrelated to the arbitration that involved riding in a car and boarding a train.” Indeed, he was AWOL for almost the entire proceeding (which lasted only two hours).
“The Ninth Circuit acknowledged that this behavior was ‘concerning.’ But the appellate court cast that concern aside because ‘the remaining two arbitrators behaved properly,” said the Venable team’s petition on behalf of their client. “That two-out-of-three holding is wrong and must be corrected. Left intact, it will erode our notions of fundamental fairness and reduce public trust in arbitration. Worse, it threatens to degrade the United States' standing as a reliable and evenhanded forum for international disputes.”
The Venable team includes John Worden, Liz Clark Rinehart, Zoe Gallagher, and Kyle Keraga.