§ 1855.Waivers

Section 1855 draws the line between the Act's default rules, which parties can contract around, and its mandatory ones, which they can't. Subsection A states the general rule: subject to the limits in subsections B through D and to the public-policy considerations in Section 1880, a party may waive or vary the Act's requirements to the extent the law otherwise allows.

Subsection B protects certain rights before a controversy exists, when a party has the least bargaining leverage to avoid signing away those rights. Before a dispute arises, a party can't waive or vary the requirement that judicial-relief requests proceed by motion under Section 1856(A), the agreement-validity rule in Section 1857(A), the provisional-remedy protections in Section 1859, or the subpoena and discovery provisions in Section 1868(A) and (B); nor can a party waive the jurisdiction rule in Section 1877 or the appeal rights in Section 1879. A party also can't agree in advance to unreasonably restrict the right to notice of an arbitration's initiation under Section 1860, or the right to disclosure from a neutral arbitrator under Section 1863. And a party can't waive the right to be represented by a lawyer under Section 1867 -- except that an employer and a labor organization may waive that right in a labor arbitration.

Subsection C lists a further set of requirements that can't be waived or varied at all, before or after a dispute arises: this section itself; the applicability rules in Section 1854(A) and (C); the court's power to compel arbitration in Section 1858; arbitrator immunity in Section 1865; the preaward-ruling procedure in Section 1869; parts of the arbitrator's power to modify or correct an award in Section 1871(D) and (E); award confirmation, vacatur, and modification in Sections 1873 through 1875; the judgment provisions in Section 1876(A) and (B); and the uniformity and unconscionability considerations in Section 1880. Subsection D then removes two categories of contracts from the Act's reach entirely: collective bargaining agreements, and contracts that reference insurance -- except that insurance-referencing contracts between insurance companies remain subject to the Act.