The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has reversed a district court judge’s denial of a motion to compel arbitration in a contract dispute between an insurance company and a trash hauler.

The judge below should have addressed the threshold issue of arbitrability before delving into the law of the case, the appeals court said in a precedential decision Tuesday, noting that the parties’ dispute pertains to the contract as a whole, not the arbitration agreement alone.