§ 171.045.Adjournment or Postponement

Scheduling authority, bounded by the deadline the parties chose.

The arbitrators may adjourn the hearing as necessary. Adjournment is the ordinary business of running a hearing over several days.

Postponement takes more. It requires a request of a party and good cause, or the arbitrators’ own motion.

The outer limit is the agreement’s award date. A postponement may not run past the date set by the agreement for making the award.

The parties can move that line. A later date agreed to by the parties works, which matches the extension power in Section 171.053(d).

The limit protects the bargain. Parties choose arbitration partly for speed, and an open-ended postponement power would take that away.

Refusing a well-supported postponement is dangerous for the panel. Section 171.088(a)(3)(B) makes refusal to postpone after a showing of sufficient cause a ground for vacating the award.

Both directions are therefore constrained. Arbitrators cannot postpone past the deadline, and cannot refuse a postponement that is warranted.

Everything here yields to the agreement, which may set its own continuance procedure or adopt institutional rules that do.

The deadline is why an award date belongs in the agreement. A clause that fixes one gives the arbitrators a boundary and the parties a date to plan around.

Good cause is left undefined. Illness, a witness abroad, a late-produced document set — the arbitrators weigh the reason against the delay it creates.