Opinion
570827/03
Decided June 13, 2005.
Plaintiff appeals 1) from an order of the Civil Court, New York County, dated June 18, 2003 (Saliann Scarpulla, J.) which denied its motion to stay arbitration and granted defendant's cross motion to stay the action pending arbitration and 2) from an order of the same court and Judge dated September 2, 2003 which denied plaintiff's motion to renew the aforesaid order.
Orders dated June 18, 2003 and September 2, 2003 (Saliann Scarpulla, J.) affirmed, with $10 costs.
Before: PRESENT: HON. WILLIAM P. McCOOE, J.P., HON. WILLIAM J. DAVIS, HON. PHYLLIS GANGEL-JACOB, Justices.
The court properly enforced the broad arbitration clause conspicuously set out in the October 7, 2002 retainer agreement prepared by defendant and assented to by the plaintiff law firm. The relevant facts, which are not seriously disputed, are summarized as follows. On September 27, 2002, plaintiff sent defendant an e-mail expressing interest in "mov[ing] ahead" on the defendant's initial written proposal to provide a "media campaign" on plaintiff's behalf. Defendant responded by sending plaintiff a retainer agreement dated October 1, 2002 containing a separately headed provision requiring that "[a]ny controversy or claim arising out of or relating to" the agreement be settled by "final and binding" arbitration. Plaintiff requested that certain changes be made to other provisions of the proposed retainer agreement, but voiced no objection to the inclusion of the arbitration clause. Defendant then forwarded a revised retainer agreement dated October 7, 2002 reflecting the contractual changes sought by plaintiff and containing the same arbitration provision as appeared in the initial retainer agreement. Plaintiff, apparently satisfied with the modified terms of the retainer agreement, agreed via e-mail on October 29, 2002 to "get the engagement agreement to [defendant] tomorrow". Given the clear intent to arbitrate evinced by this chronology of events, it does not avail plaintiff that it failed to formally execute the written agreement to arbitrate as promised ( see Crawford v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner Smith, 35 NY2d 291, 299; Rainieri v. Bell Atl. Mobile, 304 AD2d 353, lv denied 1 NY3d 502).
We have considered and rejected the plaintiff's remaining argument.
This constitutes the decision and order of the court.