§ 1283.05.Procedure For Taking Depositions and Discovery

Ordinary arbitration trades away much of a lawsuit's pretrial discovery in exchange for a faster, more private process -- California law generally allows only limited discovery in arbitration unless the parties agree to more. Section 1283.05 changes that calculus for the arbitrations it covers. Once the arbitrator or arbitrators are appointed, the parties get the same discovery rights, remedies, and procedures -- and take on the same duties, liabilities, and obligations -- as if the dispute were pending in superior court in an ordinary, nonlimited civil action, subject to the requirement that discovery depositions need the arbitrator's leave first.

The arbitrators enforce those obligations with real teeth: the same terms, conditions, sanctions, and penalties a superior court could impose in a comparable civil action, short of ordering someone arrested or imprisoned. Orders imposing those consequences are treated as conclusive and enforceable to the same degree as an arbitration award, and where such an order is equivalent to an award or a correction of one, it is subject to the same conditions that apply to making or correcting an award.

Discovery obligations reach further than the named party alone. For purposes of enforcing discovery duties, a party is deemed to include every "affiliate" -- broadly, anyone for whose immediate benefit the case is being prosecuted or defended, or an officer, director, superintendent, member, agent, or employee of such a person. An affiliate's personnel are treated as if they were the party's own officers, agents, and employees, and an affiliate's files, books, and records are treated as being in the party's own possession and control.

It is worth being precise about how far this section reaches on its own. It does not automatically supply full civil discovery in every private arbitration; the background rule in ordinary contract arbitration remains limited discovery unless the agreement provides more. But other statutes governing specific categories of disputes -- most notably personal-injury and wrongful-death claims -- require the arbitration agreement to incorporate this section's expanded discovery rights. That is also why Section 1282.2's heightened 60-day notice and witness-list procedure for high-value disputes expressly excludes matters described in this section: those cases already come with full discovery, so the separate list-exchange safeguard would be redundant.