Many States encourage the use of arbitration provisions in insurance policies. Arbitrations rarely rely on a record. They are mostly done in private (or in secret, depending on which moniker you prefer).
There is no transcript. There is no record of the evidence. The testimony and the documents are not recorded.
This can make for issues where courts are called upon to supervise the arbitration proceedings. Whenever one party or another appeals an arbitration award and requests the review of a court, the court is effectively being asked to supervise the arbitration proceeding.
However, when there is no record there can be no review at least on the ground that the evidence was insufficient to support the award. This is true even in an appeal from a trial to the court or bench trial, where there is no transcript nor any other record of the proceedings that the reviewing court can review.
Such was the ruling in a recent non-insurance-coverage case decided without a jury by a trial court. Understandably, the appellate court simply could not review evidence when there was no evidence in the record:
Held: Judgment for the plaintiff was affirmed. This court did not reach the merits of the defendant's argument that the evidence was insufficient to establish negligence on its part. There was no transcript of the bench trial, and there was no evidence in the record that a stipulation by the parties' attorneys to the facts and testimony was submitted to the trial court.
Allstate Ins. Co. v. Wally's Auto Repair, 2016 IL App (1st) 142676-U, ¶ 1 at p. *1 (Ill. 1st DCA September 23, 2016) (UNPUBLISHED OPINION. Subject to citation in limited circumstances in Illinois).
The lesson is clear: If you want any court to review the record in your proceeding, whether the court you ask to review the record is a trial court or an appellate court, make sure that they have a record to review.
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