§ 171.023.Proceeding to Stay Arbitration

The application to stay an arbitration is the answer to an arbitration nobody agreed to.

A court may stay an arbitration commenced or threatened, so a party need not wait to be served with a demand before going to court.

The showing is the absence of an agreement. That is the ground the section names, and it is narrow.

The remedy is discretionary in form. The court may stay, which fits a request made before any tribunal has acted.

A substantial bona fide dispute gets a trial. Where the existence of an agreement is contested in substance, the court shall try the issue promptly and summarily.

Both words are doing work. Promptly, because an arbitration may be running while the question is open; summarily, because this is a threshold issue and not the merits.

The finding decides the case both ways. The court stays the arbitration if it finds for the movant, and orders the parties to arbitrate if it finds for the other side.

That symmetry is the point. One proceeding settles whether these parties arbitrate, whichever way the answer goes, so nobody has to file a second application.

An order granting a stay of arbitration is appealable under Section 171.098(a)(2), unlike many interim rulings in this chapter.