Opinion
March 2, 1998
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Westchester County (Ingrassia, J.).
Ordered that the order is affirmed, with costs.
The plaintiffs' motion was, in effect, an application to disqualify the arbitrator based on his having learned certain information which the plaintiffs believed would create a bias against them. Pending determination of the plaintiffs' motion, the Supreme Court stayed the arbitration proceeding. The Supreme Court had jurisdiction to rule on the application while the arbitration proceeding was pending (see, Blistein v. Felderman, 154 A.D.2d 416; Rabinowitz v. Olewski, 100 A.D.2d 539; see also, Matter of Astoria Med. Group [Health Ins. Plan], 11 N.Y.2d 128).
We agree with the Supreme Court that the parties' agreement to arbitrate contained no provision conditioning the validity of the award on the arbitrator's ignorance of the supposedly prejudicial information. More fundamentally, we see nothing prejudicial about the information which the arbitrator learned, and we see no reason in fairness why this information should not have been known to him. In this case, "the arbitration process [was] free of the appearance of bias", and thus the Supreme Court correctly declined to intervene before any award was granted (Rabinowitz v. Olewski, supra, at 540, citing Commonwealth Corp. v. Continental Co., 393 U.S. 145; Matter of Conley v. Ambach, 93 A.D.2d 902, mod 61 N.Y.2d 685; De Camp v. Good Samaritan Hosp., 66 A.D.2d 766; cf., Scott v. Brooklyn Hosp., 93 A.D.2d 577).
Mangano, P. J., Bracken, Miller and Krausman, JJ., concur.