§ 7601.Special proceeding to enforce agreement that issue or controversy be determined by a person named or to be selected.

Parties sometimes agree that a specific question, what property is worth, how to value a loss, or some other discrete issue, should be settled by a person they name or by someone selected later, without going through a full arbitration of every dispute between them. CPLR 7601 gives that kind of agreement a way into court: a special proceeding to specifically enforce it. The court treats the agreement as if it were an arbitration agreement, and the proceeding runs under Article 75's arbitration procedures.

The section also builds in a check: if there's a defense that would require dismissal of an action brought for breach of the underlying agreement, the special proceeding gets dismissed too. That keeps a party from using the enforcement proceeding to route around a defense that would otherwise defeat the claim entirely.

One category is excluded outright, with a narrow exception carved back in. Agreements in the state's standard fire insurance policy don't get treated as arbitration agreements under this section, except that an action to enforce that policy's appraisal clause under section three thousand four hundred eight of the insurance law is not treated as an arbitration agreement either, an exception written to reinforce rather than soften the general fire-insurance carve-out.