§ 171.087.Confirmation of Award

The default outcome of an arbitration award is confirmation, and this section says so in one line.

The court shall confirm the award on application of a party.

The only escape is a statutory ground. Confirmation follows unless grounds are offered for vacating, modifying or correcting the award under Section 171.088 or 171.091.

Those grounds are short lists. Corruption, fraud, partiality, misconduct, exceeding powers, procedural refusals and the absence of an agreement in Section 171.088; miscalculation, misdescription, unsubmitted matters and imperfect form in Section 171.091.

Legal error is not among them. An arbitrator who misreads the contract or the law has not given a court a ground under either section.

Section 171.090 makes the same point from another direction, providing that relief a court could not have granted is not a reason to refuse confirmation.

Confirmation is what produces a judgment. Section 171.092 requires the court to enter a judgment or decree conforming to the order, enforceable like any other.

An application must be made. The court does not confirm an award on its own; a party asks.

Denial of a vacatur application also produces confirmation. Section 171.088(c) requires it where no motion to modify or correct is pending.