Am I as a resident of New Yoek State obligated to follow a decision of a court or arbitration in Utah

You are required to obey the ruling of any court which has jurisdiction over you.  If you signed a contract specifying that you could be sued in Utah, the Utah court would have jurisdiction over you unless (a) you can show that the contract is somehow invalid (i.e. you were defrauded into signing it, signed it under duress, were too young to contract when you signed it, etc.) AND that Utah would not otherwise have jurisdiction over you, i.e. that you do not have sufficient contacts with Utah for it to exercise jurisdiction over you without violating the Constitution (it is also possible that Utah has a long arm jurisdiction statute that is more restrictive than the Constitution requires).  Given that you entered into a business transaction with a Utah company and sent funds to Utah in connection with that transaction, and that this transaction is the subject of the lawsuit, it is likely that Utah can exercise jurisdiction over you.  At any rate, you certainly can't take the chance that jurisdiction will later be found to have been lacking. As for arbitration, generally arbitration awards are not binding until and unless they are confirmed by a Court (although again I am not familiar with the specific law of Utah.)  However, such awards are routinely confirmed, as the grounds for contesting the awards are extremely narrow.  If you lost the arbitration, you would not get the chance to relitigate the merits of the dispute in Court.  If you signed an agreement agreeing to arbitrate any dispute in Utah, again you would have to show that that agreement was invalid for some reason to avoid doing so. Theoretically, even if a Utah can exercise jurisdiction over you, you might be able to get any lawsuit moved to a different location if you can show that another jurisdiction is a more appropriate one for the dispute.  However, based on the facts as I understand them (i.e. Utah is the home state of one of the two parties, other than you, all the witnesses in the case are likely Utah residents, etc.) I doubt very much that you would succeed in such a motion, particularly if you have signed an agreement to litigate or arbitrate in Utah.