Allegation summary: Jeremy Collins (the worker) started this arbitration in order to get cyrusb (the employer) to accept the work and get paid. During the arbitration, Jeremy Collins was warned several times for unprofessional behavior, posting out of turn, and for giving opinions (i.e. personal attacks)about the other parties in the arbitration. Jeremy Collins was told that if he repeated the behavior he would forfeit the arbitration. During the testing of the work to determine if it was completed 100% or not, Jeremy Collins repeated the same behavior. He was forfeited for giving opinions and posting out of turn.
Arbitration summary: Jeremy Collins (the worker) brought this project into arbitration on September 14th to get cyrusb (the employer) to accept the work so that he could get paid. Both the employer and worker responded back and forth in the arbitration and continued working on the project.
During this time, Jeremy was asked for facts. He gave those but appended extra “narration” which he used to make many negative, personal attacks on the other party.
Examples included:
1) Instead of saying “The code is not there and I don’t know why” he said:
"I believe the employer deleted it to further delay this arbitration."
2) Instead of saying “The buyer has delayed this project” he said:
"This buyer has gone out of his way to delay the completion of this project."
In both situations Jeremy could not enter the buyer’s mind and know his motivation. So stating the extra “negative narrations” was unsolicited. It also agitated the other party and took the arbitration off track (from discussing the facts) to dealing with insults and personal attacks.
All arbitration parties have a right to a harassment free arbitration. So on the 22nd the arbitrator stated in Arbitration Response Id: 1,672,819 that both parties adhere to the following rules:
"1) You should only post facts. That means you should not post any opinions or insults about the other party. This means that you should not post what you think about the other party, what you think they were doing, what you think they intended, etc.
2) You should only post a response to the arbitration when I ask you to respond. You should not reply to what the other party posts unless I ask you to do that.
3) You should answer all questions I ask.
4) You should make sure all your responses are posted as public (CC the other party) so they can see your allegations. The only time you should send a private message is if the information is confidential and qualifies to be sent as a private message. There is more information about this that is displayed on the screen when you try to send a private message.
5) You will forfeit arbitration if you do not follow the items above."
The arbitrator explained the rules in detail to Jeremy on Friday Sep 23, 2011 12:17:57 PM (Arbitration Response Id: 1,673,524). He confirmed he understood and would follow them on Tuesday Sep 27, 2011 2:16:38 AM (Arbitration Response Id: 1,675,018). So the arbitration continued.
Between September 23rd and October 4th, there were discussions regarding what state the project was in – whether both sides were working together in arbitration or whether the project was in 100% completion testing – and the rules of arbitration. Jeremy made statements like:
"Please show me a message prior to the 29th where Cryus said he would not continue to work on this project. You just invented this in your head. How can I have faith in a process where the person in charge of it makes things up?"
"So he has gotten what he asked for. Its just a matter of you deciding if you can use semantics as a reason not to pay me."
Again, Jeremy went beyond reporting facts and presented extra narration to make personal attacks against the other party…as well as responding out of turn.
On Tuesday Oct 4, 2011 11:44:24 AM (Arbitration Response Id: 1,678,939), the arbitrator again posted the rules listed earlier and clarified the rules. The arbitrator stated:
“From this point forward, I will be strictly enforcing the rules you agreed to earlier so we can get this arbitratin to where it needs to be, which will save both of you some time.”
The project was determined to be ready for 100% completion testing and went to technical analysis on October 12th (transferred to a technical arbitrator). Both the employer and worker responded to questions posted on the flaw list.
On Wednesday Oct 19, 2011 2:12:48 AM (Arbitration Response Id: 1,686,707), Jeremy responded to the arbitration with:
"The buyer has made outright false statements"
"This is clear proof of a blatant false statement to the arbitrator."
Once again, Jeremy was responding out of turn and also posting extra narration to make personal attacks. The new arbitrator was not aware that Jeremy had already been warned previously. So he warned him for those two things in Arbitration Response Id: 1,687,047 on Wednesday Oct 19, 2011 1:20:40 PM. Jeremy claimed that the statements he made were facts and not opinions. Tim (the technical arbitrator) then reviewed the arbitration and realized that Jeremy had already been warned twice before. He explained:
"I had previously missed that Michele warned that you would be forfeited for not following instructions.
You are stating that they made false statements. If you had said that the statements were inconsistent – this would be a fact. You are arguing what you think they (the employer) were doing or what you think they (the employer) intended.
Even if you were correct that your response was not an opinion, you have forfeited for breaking #2. (responding out of turn) I did not ask you for your opinion at that time. You would have been given a chance to respond in the flaw list."
To explain further:
1) Jeremy was warned multiple times not to respond out of turn and instead give the arbitrator an opportunity to review the statements. Jeremy chose to ignore this and continued to post. So this was the first reason he was forfeited.
2) The second reason was for continuing to post opinions in the form of extra narration and personal attacks. Instead of saying “Those are not correct” he said the employer made “blatantly false statements” and “outright false statements” (i.e. accused the other party of lying). He was told not to add this extra narration several times, and so he was forfeited.
Jeremy was given the opportunity to request a review of the arbitration by a senior arbitrator, but declined the request. So his forfeiture was upheld.
Full Arbitration
