Baltimore County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 4 v. Baltimore County

The central issue in this appeal is whether a duty to arbitrate may survive expiration of the agreement that contains the arbitration clause. The seemingly1 peripheral issue is who decides this question initially: the arbitrator or the court. An additional consideration lurking beneath the surface of these two questions, but necessary to their resolution, is when a dispute may be said to arise “under” an expired agreement so as to be arbitrable despite the agreement’s expiration.

We now place these concepts into the context of this case. A collective-bargaining agreement between Baltimore…