§ 9-9-4.Application to court; venue; service of papers; scope of court’s consideration; application for order of attachment or preliminary injunction

Arbitration runs mostly outside the courthouse, but parties still need a court for certain moves — compelling an unwilling party to arbitrate, appointing an arbitrator, or confirming an award. This section is the procedural roadmap for those court visits.

Subsection (a) sends applications to the superior court of the proper county, or to whatever court is already hearing a related pending action. It requires applications to be filed and heard like a civil motion, though the initial filing must be made the way a complaint is filed. Subsection (b) then lays out four venue options in order: the county named in the agreement for the hearing, the county where the hearing already happened, the county where a party resides or does business, or, failing all of those, any county at all. Subsection (c) sets the service rules — a demand for arbitration goes out by registered or certified mail or statutory overnight delivery with a return receipt, the initial court application must be served the way a complaint is served to start a lawsuit, and only the papers that follow get the lighter service allowed for pleadings filed after the original complaint.

Two more pieces round out the section. Subsection (d) keeps the court in its lane: when ruling on an arbitration application, the court cannot weigh whether the underlying claim has merit — that judgment belongs to the arbitrators. Subsection (e) gives the court one narrow way to step further in: it may grant an attachment or a preliminary injunction connected to a pending or future arbitration, but only when the relief is necessary to keep an eventual award from being rendered meaningless, for instance if assets might disappear before the arbitrators can rule.