Confirmation of an arbitration award; Scope of review; TSP Servs., Inc. v. National-Standard, LLC; Port Huron Area Sch. Dist. v. Port Huron Educ. Ass’n; Whether arbitrators exceeded their powers; Detroit Auto. Inter-Ins. Exch. v. Gavin; When an award should be vacated; Collins v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of MI; Comparative fault statutory defense to liability; Lamp v. Reynolds; MCL 600.2957(1); Speculative damages in a tort action; Health Call of Detroit v. Atrium Home & Health Care Servs., Inc.; Limited liability company (LLC)

Concluding that the trial court properly found that the arbitration panel’s decision rested in part on proximate cause and damages issues, which were beyond the scope of judicial review, the court held that it did not err in confirming the arbitration award. After unsuccessfully trying to negotiate a leave of absence from defendant-law firm, plaintiff went ahead with an internship in college football coaching. He “requested an expulsion vote from the firm, but the firm deemed him to have voluntarily withdrawn from his membership and declined to conduct a vote.” He later sued the firm and defendants-managing members on the ground “that he had not been expelled from the firm and had not voluntarily withdrawn . . . .” The case went to arbitration, and the panel concluded that he “was not entitled to relief because he voluntarily withdrew from his membership with the firm and had not sufficiently proved proximate cause or the amount of damages.” He moved to vacate the award, on the basis that it “contained legal errors in its interpretation of former MCL 450.4509” (voluntary withdrawal from a LLC) and in “its proximate cause and damages determinations,” while defendants moved to confirm the award on the basis the panel did not make “an error of statutory construction and its proximate cause and damages decisions were unreviewable.” Agreeing with defendants, the trial court confirmed the award. On appeal, the court likewise concluded that the arbitration panel did not erroneously apply the law in finding that plaintiff did not prove proximate cause and damages, and that “the trial court did not err when it found that the determinations were not reviewable.” The panel ruled that “regardless of whether former MCL 450.4509 applied, plaintiff had not satisfied his burden to prove that the firm’s conduct, rather than his own conduct, damaged him.” The court noted that “the parties’ comparative fault was a defense to all conduct, not merely negligent conduct.” Given that the amount of relative fault is a fact question, the trial court was correct that this determination was not reviewable. Further, a review of the panel’s determination that plaintiff’s damages were speculative would require the trial court to weigh the evidence before the panel. The court also concluded that the panel’s findings on proximate cause and damages resolved the “case regardless of its interpretation of former MCL 450.4509.” Affirmed.