§ 8.01-581.010.Vacating an award.

This section is where a losing party’s dissatisfaction with an arbitration outcome meets the law’s limited tolerance for undoing it. Courts do not reweigh the merits of what the arbitrator decided. Instead, the statute lists six specific defects that justify vacating an award: the award was obtained through corruption, fraud, or other undue means; an arbitrator who was supposed to be neutral showed evident partiality, or any arbitrator was corrupt or engaged in misconduct that prejudiced a party; the arbitrators exceeded the authority the parties gave them; the arbitrators refused to postpone the hearing for good cause, refused to hear material evidence, or otherwise ran the hearing in a way that substantially prejudiced a party; there was no valid arbitration agreement at all, and that issue was not already decided against the objecting party and the party did not participate in the hearing without objecting; or, as of a 2026 amendment, the award came from an arbitrator selected in violation of the Arbitration Fairness Act’s selection-process rules.

Losing because the arbitrator would not order relief a court could have granted is not on that list — the statute expressly says that is not grounds for vacating. And the clock matters: an application must be filed within ninety days after the award is delivered, or, for fraud-based claims, within ninety days of when the fraud was or should have been discovered. A party can raise these grounds either by petition or as a defense to someone else’s petition to confirm the award, as long as the timing rules are met.

Vacating is not always the end of the arbitration. For most grounds, the court can send the case back for a rehearing before new arbitrators chosen the way the agreement specifies. For the two narrower grounds — arbitrators exceeding their powers, or an unfair hearing — the rehearing can go back to the same arbitrators or their successors, and the original time limit for making an award starts over from the date of the court’s order. If the court denies the application to vacate and no motion to modify or correct the award is pending, it must confirm the award.