On November 26, 2012, the United States Supreme Court, in a per curiam opinion, vacated an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision in Nitro-Lift Technologies, L.L.C. v. Howard et al. (Docket 1-1377), on the ground that the state court failed to acknowledge and accord deference to the substantive nature of the Federal Arbitration Act (“Act”) in declaring the noncompetition provisions in two employment agreements to be null and void on public policy grounds, rather than leaving such determination to the arbitrator in the first instance.
The United States Supreme Court emphasized that the Act “declares a national policy favoring arbitration” and that “the substantive law the Act created [is] applicable in state and federal courts.” “It is the mainstay of the Act’s substantive law that attacks on the validity of the contract, as distinct from attacks on the validity of the arbitration clause itself, are to be resolved by the arbitrator in the first instance, not the federal or state courts.”
Nitro-Lift Technologies, L.L.C. v. Howard et al. (Docket 1-1377)