Yesterday, the California Supreme Court issued its opinion in Law Finance Group, LLC v. Key, 2023 WL 4168752.  The Court's opinion answers the question of whether the deadline for seeking vacatur of an arbitral award set forth in Section 1288.2 of the Code of Civil Procedure is a non jurisdictional statute of limitations that is subject to equitable tolling and equitable estoppel.  The Court held that it is.

I was more interested in the background of the case because it involved an arbitration's panel determination that a loan by a licensed California Finance lender to fund probate litigation was a consumer, rather than commercial loan.  The consequence of this characterization proved costly for the lender because a consumer loan, the lender was prohibited from collecting compound interest and other fees under the California Financing Law.

The borrower, however, was unable to persuade the panel to apply Financial Code Section 22750 which provides that if a loan contract “willfully” charges “any amount other than, or in excess of, the charges permitted by” the CFL, “the contract of loan is void, and no person has any right to collect or receive any principal, charges, or recompense in connection with the transaction.”   Instead, the panel chose to "reform" the loan agreement to permit the lender to collect simple interest.  We don't know whether this is proper, because he Supreme Court did not decide whether to vacate the panel's decision.  Rather, the Supreme Court remanded the case to the Court of Appeal to determine whether equitable considerations should excuse the borrower's failure to meet the statutory deadline for seeking vacature of the panel's decision.