I'm involved in a FINRA arbitration with my previous employer. The firm's attorney had a conflict with the hearing date and asked for a postponement. I didn't object and the arbitrators granted the firm's request. However, the panel assessed half of the postponement fee to me even though the request didn't come from me. Is this fair?

-M.T., Illinois

No, it's not fair. Most likely, this was simply an error on the part of either the FINRA staff or the arbitrators. Often the arbitrators aren't thinking about the postponement fee when they decide a postponement request. When they give their decision to the FINRA Case Administrator, however, the staff person will typically ask the chairman what he or she wants to do about the postponement fee. Usually, the panel does not want to give any impression that it's leaning one way or the other and so will typically give a knee-jerk response of "split it."

But, in doing so the FINRA panel is not giving careful consideration to who actually made the postponement request or the reason for the postponement. When one side doesn't object to a postponement, the panel sometimes assumes that side has joined in the request (i.e., that it's a joint postponement request). Obviously, there is a difference between joining in a postponement request and merely not raising an objection to it.

I would suggest that you write to the FINRA Case Administrator, copying the other side, to clarify that you did not join in the request and that the postponement was sought solely by the firm. Ask that the panel reconsider the assessment of the fees.

I own a small brokerage firm and we've recently been sued by a former customer. In looking over this customer's account, it seems to me that based on the income the account generated and the withdrawals the customer made, the client actually made money. How can someone sue when they don't have any damages?

-T.B., via email

Other factors may be at work here that make the question of damages more complicated than you might think at first blush. Rather than trying to guess at what happened in the account, I would suggest you retain a qualified forensic accounting expert. There are a number of excellent companies that specialize in creating account analyses specifically for securities arbitration cases. Some of these companies tend to specialize in providing analysis for one side or the other, so in selecting your expert make sure to ask how often it has worked for brokerage firms and how often for customers. You should also make sure it has sufficient experience by inquiring about the number of cases in which it has testified.

Also ask if the expert can testify as to compliance issues in addition to the basic number crunching. While the preparation of an expert account analysis can cost several thousand dollars, a well-crafted report by a qualified expert can ultimately save you much more by convincing an arbitration panel that your numbers are more accurate.

Alan J. Foxman, ESQ., is an attorney with Fred Chikovsky & Assoc. in Boca Raton, Fla. His comments are not intended to be legal advice. He can be reached at alanfoxman@bellsouth.net.