Liz Kramer

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Liz Kramer current serves as Minnesota's Solicitor General.  Previously, she was a partner at Stinson Leonard Street and the founder of the award-winning blog, ArbitrationNation.

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Arbitration is having its 15 minutes of fame.  Thanks to a series in the New York Times, my inbox is full of links to the articles, questions about the information, and fascinating commentary.  [Next time I am in Oakland, I am totally having the “Scalia” cocktail at Italian Colors.]  With the far-reaching audience of the…

Richard Cordray, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has positioned himself as the Boogeyman that financial companies fear this Halloween season.  Earlier this month, the CFPB outlined the proposals under consideration for regulating arbitration in the consumer financial industry.  The proposals address the availability of class actions — as was widely expected — but…

Two opinions came out recently in disputes over the arbitrability of putative class actions alleging that employees were not paid for overtime (and other labor violations). In one, the Nevada Supreme Court acknowledged that its 2011 ruling, finding class action waivers in arbitration were unconscionable, is preempted. In the second, the Ninth Circuit found…

Nursing home arbitration agreements are among the most unpopular arbitration agreements around.  Last week, Kentucky’s Supreme Court issued a lengthy, but fractured, opinion, finding three arbitration agreements were never validly formed because the signing parties did not have authority to give up the decedent’s constitutional right to a jury trial.  Extendicare Homes, Inc. v. Whisman…

The issue in analyzing whether a party waived its right to arbitrate is usually whether the defendant waited too long to assert the arbitration obligation.  But, this week the Second Circuit had the opportunity to address whether a plaintiff waives its right to arbitrate by the simple fact of bringing a case in court.

In…

The Eleventh Circuit has a lesson for future litigants: the presence of a repeat player is not enough to show the evident partiality needed to vacate an arbitration award under the Federal Arbitration Act.

In  Johnson v. Directory Assistants, Inc., __ F.3d __, 2015 WL 4939578 (11th Cir. Aug. 20, 2015), an advertising company…