Robert Cooper Grier

“ Courts should be careful to avoid a wrong use of the word 'mistake,' and, by making it synonymous with mere error of judgment, assume to themselves an arbitrary power over awards. The same result would follow if the court should treat the arbitrators as guilty of corrupt partiality, merely because their award is not such an one as the chancellor would have given. We are all too prone, perhaps, to impute either weakness of intellect or corrupt motives to those who differ with us in opinion. ”

“ The charges of fraud, corruption, or improper conduct in the arbitrators, as we have seen, are wholly denied by the answer, which must be assumed to be true, unless facts are admitted from which they are a necessary or legal inference. We can see nothing in the admitted facts of the case from which any such inference can be justly made. The damages allowed for the alleged oppression of Burchell, and the ruin of his business as a merchant, may seem large to some, while others may think the sum of four, or even five thousand dollars as no extravagant compensation for such injuries. ”

“ The general principles, upon which courts of equity interfere to set aside awards, are too well settled by numerous decisions to admit of doubt. There are, it is true, some anomalous cases, which, depending on their peculiar circumstances, cannot be exactly reconciled with any general rule ”