{"id":2487,"date":"2026-07-28T18:27:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T18:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gifted-chandrasekhar.174-138-183-210.plesk.page\/?page_id=2487"},"modified":"2026-09-24T19:49:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:49:57","slug":"stay-of-litigation-pending-completion-of-arbitration","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/gifted-chandrasekhar.174-138-183-210.plesk.page\/?page_id=2487","title":{"rendered":"Stay Of Litigation Pending Completion Of Arbitration"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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STAY OF LITIGATION PENDING COMPLETION OF ARBITRATION<\/strong><\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t

Smith v. Spizzirri, 601 U.S. 472<\/u><\/em><\/strong>

The defendants moved to compel arbitration and dismiss the plaintiffs\u2019 class action. The plaintiffs did not oppose the motion to compel but opposed the motion to dismiss, arguing that Section 3 of the FAA required a stay. The district court granted the motion to dismiss without prejudice and the Ninth Circuit affirmed, holding that a district court has discretion to dismiss when the only issue is whether the matter is arbitrable. Plaintiffs\u2019 writ of certiorari was granted.

The Supreme Court reversed and remanded. Section 3 provides that, when any issue in a suit is subject to arbitration, the court \u201cshall on application of one of the parties stay the trial of the action until such arbitration has been had in accordance with the terms of the agreement, providing the applicant for the stay is not in default in proceeding with such arbitration.\u201d
Use of the word \u201cshall\u201d \u201ccreates an obligation impervious to judicial discretion.\u201d Lexecon Inc.<\/em> v. Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach<\/em>, 523 U. S. 26, 35 (1998). That plain statutory text requires a court to stay the proceedings. See Maine Community Health Options<\/em> v. United States<\/em>, 590 U. S. 296, 310 (2020). When \u00a73 says that a court \u201cshall . . . stay\u201d the proceeding, the court must do so. Just as \u201cshall\u201d means \u201cshall,\u201d \u201cstay\u201d means \u201cstay.\u201d
The defendants argued that \u201cstay\u201d in \u00a73 \u201cmeant only that the court must stop parallel incourt litigation, which a court can achieve by dismissing without retaining jurisdiction. The Supreme Court held that there were, however, two significant problems with that argument. First, it disregarded the long-established legal meaning of the word \u201cstay.\u201d That term denotes the \u201ctemporary suspension\u201d of legal proceedings, not the conclusive termination of such proceedings. Second, the defendants\u2019 attempt to read \u201cstay\u201d to include \u201cdismiss\u201d cannot be squared with the surrounding statutory text. By directing a court to stay the proceeding \u201cuntil such arbitration has been had in accordance with the terms of the agreement,\u201d and only so long as \u201cthe applicant . . . is not in default in proceeding with the arbitration,\u201d \u00a73 ensured that the parties can return to federal court if arbitration breaks down or fails to resolve the dispute. That return ticket would not be available if the court dismissed the suit rather than staying it.

Defendants also suggested that, notwithstanding the statute, district courts have inherent authority to dismiss proceedings subject to arbitration. The Court responded that even if that were true, the inherent powers of the courts may be controlled or overridden by statute or rule. Section 3 does exactly that.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STAY OF LITIGATION PENDING COMPLETION OF ARBITRATION Smith v. Spizzirri, 601 U.S. 472 The defendants moved to compel arbitration and dismiss the plaintiffs\u2019 class action. The plaintiffs did not oppose the motion to compel but opposed the motion to dismiss, arguing that Section 3 of the FAA required a stay. The district court granted the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2487","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gifted-chandrasekhar.174-138-183-210.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gifted-chandrasekhar.174-138-183-210.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gifted-chandrasekhar.174-138-183-210.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gifted-chandrasekhar.174-138-183-210.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gifted-chandrasekhar.174-138-183-210.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2487"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gifted-chandrasekhar.174-138-183-210.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3299,"href":"https:\/\/gifted-chandrasekhar.174-138-183-210.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2487\/revisions\/3299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gifted-chandrasekhar.174-138-183-210.plesk.page\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}