John McArthur’s work as an arbitrator, which extends back to 1994, tracks his 37 years working as a trial lawyer. In his trial career, he has represented plaintiffs and defendants, qui tam relators, classes in class actions, parties in MDL litigation and in arbitration, some of the world’s largest corporations, small businessmen, billionaires, two Alaskan Native Corporations, four States (Alaska, Hawai’i, Louisiana, and Mississippi), a franchisee whose franchisor overnight hired all of his multi-state staff of employees except his two sons while terminating him, and an elderly couple in a bitter dispute with their neighbors.

As an arbitrator, McArthur has sat as sole arbitrator, party-appointed arbitrator, and chair in more than 125 arbitrations, the great majority of them high-stakes, complex disputes from around the country. McArthur’s experience has led him to be admitted to some of the most prestigious arbitral organizations and put on some of its leading lists: Fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators and Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, member of the National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals, member of the ADR committee of Litigation Counsel of America, a listed arbitrator for the AAA, CPR, Fed-Arb, and FINRA as well as the international rosters of the LCIA, KLRCA, and the Roster of International Arbitrators. The disputes he has arbitrated have spanned many industries, usually involve aggressive counsel, and often turn on highly technical issues. They have run the gamut of business claims, ranging from antitrust violations to securities disputes, breaches of simple and complex contracts to the widest range of business torts, purchase and sale agreements to take-or-pay and requirement contracts, franchise disagreements and supply contracts to investment fallings out, partnership battles to dissolution of family corporations, almost every aspect of the oil and gas industry, and terminations of employment to clashes over the effects of economic collapse, regulation, and deregulation. Most of McArthur’s arbitrations are battles over tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. The largest began as a dispute over a billion dollars.

McArthur enjoys the job of administering high-stakes arbitrations immensely, as he does the challenge of mastering a complex record on the facts and on the law and when applicable writing a reasoned award that truly explains the outcome. His forthcoming book for Juris Publications is a treatise on how to strengthen arbitration awards. McArthur’s commitment to making the arbitrations he oversees fair, efficient proceedings is reflected in many of his extensive articles on arbitration as well as that book. McArthur’s diverse pre-law-school jobs and his extensive graduate-level education equip him with an array of tools to deeply understand the human circumstances that produce irreconcilable disagreements and to resolve them impartially, neutrally, and independently.